


No Man's Land

by RaiLockhart



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Caitlin is Killer Frost, Cisco is Vibe, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4985617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaiLockhart/pseuds/RaiLockhart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year after a mysterious explosion, Central City has become a no man's land. Thousands of ordinary citizens left the city behind, and the ones who remained were subjected to the ever increasing control of the government: random searches, curfews, limits on where to go and who to see. But unbeknownst to the general public, the government, through the CCPD Special Forces Unit, tracks and captures people who develop extraordinary powers. Two of these advanced humans, Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon, have joined forces with Iris West to try and save those the CCPD hunts from their fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

Caitlin assumed that when she died, she would hear alarms in hell. That would be her own personal punishment for all the things she’d done in life, all those things she couldn’t control: she would die, go to hell, and hear the blaring of Cisco’s warning alarm over and over. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to imagine ignoring it, staying in her sweltering hot containment cell for another few hours and pretending that the darkness behind her eyelids was actually her sleeping instead of just her brain trying to block out countless memories of a man in a dark room and hard metal on her wrists. She imagined the alarm stopping, imagined Cisco going out on his own and maybe getting some peace for the first time in over a year.

But the alarm kept blaring, and just the idea of Cisco going out there alone to face whatever was out there sent a chill down her already cold spine.

Caitlin sighed heavily and hit a button on her nightstand, letting them know she heard it, and she was coming. Her bed creaked as she rolled and planted her feet on the ground, and she saw the thin layer of ice that accumulated under her body start to melt. Cisco wasn’t kidding when he told her he kept it quite hot in here. Sometimes she wondered how they got the gas to keep her room so warm, but she didn’t want to know; she didn’t want yet another thing to add to her continually growing list of misdemeanors and felonies, her sins.

Her uniform, and she was certainly being generous calling it a _uniform_ , was strewn about her floor where she had dropped it last night after their unsuccessful patrol. The alarm kept her company as she pulled on her too tight (for her taste, anyway) leather pants, and biker jacket. She threw her hair up into a ponytail and slid the earpiece on her nightstand into her ear before pressing the button to leave her room, timing herself by the wailing of the alarm. Three wails to get on her pants, nine to get completely dressed and walk out of her room. As soon as her door opened, the alarm stopped.

“Nice to see you finally out of your room, Cait,” Cisco said through the comm, and she rolled her eyes. Both he and Caitlin had a tracker in their arms to make sure their whereabouts in the city and the compound were always known, but Cisco was the only person who used it regularly. Iris, despite both Caitlin and Cisco’s better judgement, trusted them too much to keep track of them. “I was beginning to think you were going to freeze the alarm and ignore it.”

“Can I do that?” she asked, coming up beside him. He grinned at her from underneath his dorky motorcycle helmet. She didn’t even bother with a helmet, heading straight to the sleek black motorcycle emblazoned with a simple blue snowflake. That, like much of their current setup, had been Cisco’s idea; he wanted to make sure they had something of their own when they were out on the field. (He called her bike the Frostcycle and his the Vibemobile. She called him an idiot.)

Cisco knocked his fists together and tightened the velcro on one of his fingerless gloves. “Nah. Like everything else in your room, it’s resistant to extreme cold.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes at him a second time, and kicked up the stand on her bike as she settled on top. Cisco followed her lead, steadying the bike between his legs as he turned it on and revved the engine. “You ready for this?” he asked.

“I guess,” Caitlin answered, keeping her eyes on the cargo door.

A warm laugh filled the inside of her ear, and Caitlin glanced up toward the camera in the loading dock, where she knew that Iris was watching. The bike purred between her legs, waiting for her to rev it up and push forward. “Oh, come on, Cait,” Iris said. “You two are freaking superheroes! You should be excited.”

Iris had too high an estimation of them; they were _not_ superheroes. Caitlin wanted to say it over and over again, to carve it into the console above Iris’s computer and make sure that she read it every time she walked into the control room. She and Cisco were not heroes. They didn’t save ordinary people from evil men and women. They didn’t choose to do something good with their lives, to try and make a difference, to make Central City a nicer place. This wasn’t some world where things were easy, where people needed saving, where the bad guys were truly bad and the good guys were actually good. She wasn’t even sure if there were good or bad people left in Central City. There were only the Advanced, the people left there to combat and capture them, and the ordinary citizens unable to get out.

And Iris, she supposed. The one person in the world who looked at Central City and saw something that needed to be saved instead of escaped. “Easy for you to say,” Caitlin muttered, her gaze falling from the camera back to the cargo door. “You’re not the one going out every night in a skin tight biker getup.”

“Oh, come on!” Cisco said. He motioned toward the camera, signaling Iris to open the door. “I’m working on new costumes. We just have to make due until they’re ready.”

“If you hadn’t spent so long on these bikes,” Caitlin countered, “we would already have costumes. Actual ones. Not that blue corseted mess I see you tinkering with on our downtime.”

Cisco looked over at her and grinned. “Aw, so you do come and check on me when we’re not working,” he said, and batted his eyelashes. “And here I thought you didn’t care.”

Both of them revved their bikes at the same time, and shot out like bullets into the crisp fall night. Had someone predicted a year ago that she would spend her nights fighting crime in a tight leather outfit, she would have been both appalled and unsettled, and assumed they were making fun of her. Then again, had someone told her she would one day be able to walk out into a snowdrift and feel warm, she would have thought they were hallucinating and recommended they come to the hospital to see a psychiatrist. Oh, how things change.

She couldn’t even feel the chill in the air as they rode along the abandoned streets, dodging potholes and craters in the pavement as they drove. Cisco engineered their bikes to go well above the speed limit; he’d had to sneak parts in from the outside to make sure that he could override the suppressant system built into the bikes Iris purchased for them. (He also got some parts dropped off to better align the aesthetic of their bikes with his vision of their team. Case in point: the blue snowflake.) He’d had to pay extra for these parts, trading away a cold gun he’d built in his spare time to assemble all of the parts for their machines. She wondered if that cold gun was ever going to come back and bite them in the ass. There were no good people left in Central City, after all, and the people Cisco had gone to for parts seemed even more suspicious than the usual human on the street.

But she couldn’t fault Cisco for building the bikes, or for making them his priority. Their speed may be against the law, but it reminded Caitlin of flying, and falling through the air. She loved it. Riding her bike was one of the few things since the explosion that made her feel alive and had it not been so horrendously illegal, she might have gone out during the day and ridden around in the sun. It reminded her of her previous life. Of the plans she and her fiancé had made to go skydiving during their honeymoon.

She bit her lip and refocused on the road in front of her.

“What’s the sitch?” she heard Cisco ask over the comms.

“Officially, CCPD are tracking a suspect assumed to be armed and dangerous,” Iris said. “Unofficially, they’ve deployed their Special Forces unit, which means we’re dealing with an Advanced. From what I can tell, this guy can turn his skin into metal. Early reports of him firing a gun were just the bullets ricocheting off of his skin.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Cisco said. “Ricochet. I like it.”

“Seriously?” Iris asked. “We should call him something like Iron Man.”

Cisco snorted. “We don’t even know if his skin turns to iron, so, _vetoed_ ,” he said.

Caitlin tuned them out, instead focusing on how they were going to defeat a man made out of metal. She wondered if his skin changed composition or if his skin turned into some kind of armor that encased his body, and whether or not the transformation was quick. Was it a fluid metal? Would he be able to walk and move in the same way, or would he be slower, his frame bulked out with a metal casing? Not that it mattered; either way, he was going to be susceptible to the cold.

They sped onward, and Iris guided them through alleyways and over access roads, her voice a constant buzz in their ears. Avoid that road, go through that alleyway, take a left. One of the few benefits of nearly constant surveillance, she supposed; there were cameras everywhere that gave Iris the access she needed to be their eyes and ears over the city, and when the police force was focused on something, most of them were unmonitored. Which meant Iris could access them as she needed them, tapped into the mainframe as she was, without alerting anyone to her presence. Caitlin and Cisco raced along, so used to Iris’ direction that they were able to change course and turn down side roads in seconds to avoid being spotted by roving patrols. “Okay, team,” Iris said finally, “in one block, take a left, and you should be directly in front of the Advanced. You’re going in blind, though. CCPD has full control of the street cams around the fight, and if I access them, they’ll know someone was watching.”

She and Cisco rounded the corner, and for a second all Caitlin could see were blindingly bright lights. Some of it she could attribute to the flood lights and sirens above the police cars, but the brilliant glow of yellow lightning was something else entirely. She pulled out her glasses (one of Cisco’s many quick inventions, made to block the flood lights and flash grenades used by officers) and squinted through the lens; even with them on, it was hard to make out exactly what she was seeing.

“Woah,” Cisco said beside her. “It looks like there is another Advanced out here. Iris, are the police getting reports of anything?”

Caitlin could make him out now, faintly. Dressed head to toe in bright scarlet leather, he would be nearly invisible due to his speed if it weren’t for the bright trail of lightning that followed him as he ran. It was easier to track the lightning than it was to pinpoint the second Advanced, and she watched as he darted all around their metal target, trying desperately to take him out.

“Shit,” Cisco mumbled. “Do you see how fast he’s running? That suit must be made of some special polymer to reduce friction or else it would be on fire---”

“ _Focus_ , Vibe,” Caitlin hissed, looking from the fight back to the CCPD. They were all engrossed in what was happening to the metal man, and hadn’t noticed she and Cisco pulling up. The man moving faster than light was trying to guide their iron man away from the police barricade, but it wasn’t working. The metal man stayed put.

“I’m not getting reports of a second Advanced,” Iris confirmed, and Caitlin sighed. “So either he’s an Advanced invisible to the human eye, or he works for the Special Forces unit. Do you guys think they’ve started recruiting?”

If the CCPD hadn’t reported it, then he worked under their direction. And good guy or not… well, there were no good guys, she reminded herself. And if there were, they certainly did not work for the CCPD. If he was working with the government, then he was part of the task force designed to eradicate their kind. The ones that captured both her and Cisco right after the explosion.

Cisco pulled off his helmet and glanced over at her. “Maybe if we had stayed, they would have recruited us, too,” he said with a frown.

“I doubt it,” Caitlin said. “Iris, what can you find out about this guy? Do we know who he is?”

She heard Iris sigh. “I can’t get into their database without being tracked,” she said. “And whoever he is, they’re going to want to keep his identity, and definitely his abilities, under wraps. If I go in, officers will be here any minute.”

Iris was right. Going into these situations was never easy, of course, but so far they only had to deal with the other Advanced and, more and more frequently, the CCPD Special Forces unit. Caitlin never would have imagined that people who so clearly hate their kind would team up with one, much less throw the CCPD emblem on his suit and overtly claim him as one of their own.

“Whoever he is,” Cisco said, “he’s getting his ass kicked. Metal skin isn’t going to give way to a few punches just because the scarlet speedster is fast. He has to know he’s outmatched. I mean, he’d need a sonic boom to even register a hit, and he’s not far enough away to make it happen.”

She closed her eyes for a second, running over plans and their various outcomes in her head. Iris wouldn’t be able to help; out here, in the field as Cisco called it, it was just the two of them. She would have to trust her instincts. “Vibe,” she said, blinking against the light again, “you can produce a sonic boom, right?”

He smirked. “Of course. But I need to be close enough to make contact with his skin to have an effect.”

“Leave that to me,” she said. “Just be ready to hit him, and hit him hard. We’re going to need one solid blow to knock this guy out long enough to bring him back.” She took a deep breath, and felt the chill build in her stomach, felt it flow through her veins. Ice crystallized in the air and encased her fingers, and she focused on condensing and freezing the moisture in the air near her palm.

Caitlin lobbed her first chunk of solid ice toward the metal Advanced. It shattered near his feet, and both he and the scarlet speedster shouted in surprised. She saw a flash of lightning as one pulled away, but icy tendrils started threading up the legs of their target, and he had to yank his foot out in order to move.

She ran forward, another ball of ice already forming in her palm. She gripped it like a baseball, adding her own internal chill to the frozen moisture before throwing it at him. The ice arched, leaving a trail of frozen water falling through the air as it hurdled toward the guy’s chest. He dodged, but she made another one, throwing it against his side hard enough that it exploded against his metal skin. She spun around and sent a spray of ice toward the ground, catching one of his feet before he fell.

Their metal man slammed to his knees, cracking the ice underneath him. But she watched him shiver, and saw how much slower he was reacting to her attacks. The metal must only be skin deep, she figured, and his organs were starting to cool considerably. And without a source of heat around, he would either have to lose the metal skin or risk freezing from the outside in. Caitlin placed her hands on his shoulders and focused on draining the heat from him, on pulling out every single calorie of heat in his body. She could feel the tingle of warmth in her fingers and she relished the sensation of heat, however fleeting, on her cold skin.

“Frost, watch out!” Cisco’s voice crackled in her ear. Caitlin tensed, and she started condensing the water around her to build a thin layer of ice over her skin. She wasn’t sure what was coming, but she knew Cisco had her back, and he wasn’t just throwing out a warning.

Light reflected brightly off of metal, and Caitlin tried to get out of the way of what she now knew was an oncoming attack, but she was too slow. In a flash, the CCPD Advanced slammed a fist into her stomach, cracking the ice barrier she’d created. She doubled over from the force, simultaneously clutching her stomach with one hand and reaching out toward the speedster with another. But he was so much faster than she was, and she glanced up to see him ten feet away, shaking ice off his gloved fist.

“Killer Frost,” he announced, standing tall with his legs spread apart. She glared at him. That was not her name. Cisco tried calling her that once, after he heard one of the guards at the station use it, and she nearly froze him to his chair. And she actually liked Cisco. This asshole, though, was another story. She certainly would not mind draining him of all his body heat, if she were still that person. “You are under arrest. Stand down and let the CCPD take you in.”

Caitlin sucked in a breath and stood up straight. She wasn’t going to go back there without a fight, and if he wanted to get her, he was going to have to hit her again. And this time, she would be prepared. He had to get close to her to hurt her, and close range was going to be hard for him. Her frost would slow him down before she passed out.

“Yeah,” Cisco said, “that ain’t happening.”

The speedster glanced over at him and started to run, but Cisco thrust his hands out and she could see the other Advanced stop in his tracks, his hands pressed tight against his ears. He pitched forward, his speed all but gone, the lightning that had been crackling around him dying off. “It looks like my vibration works for more than just shielding us from cameras,” Cisco said over the comm, and Caitlin nodded.

“I’ll take him,” she said, “if you can sonic boom the metal off of our original target.” Cisco grinned and nodded (he had a fondness for sonic booms that she didn’t understand), and Caitlin ran over to the mysterious CCPD speedster. She froze his hands together in cuffs, and encased the lower half of his body in solid ice. Unless this guy could vibrate his molecules, then either he was going to have to wait until he defrosted or the CCPD would have to carry him back to whatever cell they dragged him out of.

She heard shouting from behind the barricade, people barking out orders to other people, but so far, no officers crossed their self-made line. To be safe, though, she threw a few ice bombs in their direction, making the pavement in front of their barricade slick and dangerous. If they stepped on it, they risked freezing their feet and developing frostbite.

She heard the unmistakable clap of energy that always came with Cisco’s strongest move, and looked over her shoulder to see their original target on the ground, all of the metal off of his skin. Cisco shot her a thumbs up, and she pushed herself off of the passed out speedster to head over to the metal man. He was big. If they were going to be able to get him back to the compound, it was going to take both of them to hoist him onto Cisco’s bike.

“Guys, you might want to grab our target and run,” Iris said. “CCPD is calling in backup to handle, and I quote, to take down the two outlaws that came to the rescue of criminal Tony Woodward, end quote.”

Cisco _tsked_. “We’re not exactly rescuing him,” he said. Caitlin lifted Tony up by his shoulders, and god. He had to be at least 200 pounds if not more… it was going to be a struggle to get him off the ground and into a containment cell at the warehouse. “Well, I guess we’re rescuing him from---”

Something popped behind them, and Caitlin dropped Tony’s body in surprise. Cisco cursed and she turned to see the speedster vibrating on the ground, ice shooting off of him as it exploded away from his body. Of course he was able to vibrate his molecules out of her trap. She didn’t even know what she was expecting, at this point. He was probably just another one of their experiments, pushed past the brink of humanity in the same series of tests and trials that she had to endure under the care of the government. Only he made it all the way through without losing control.

“Leave the target and run,” she commanded, grabbing Cisco’s elbow. “We need to get out of here, now.”

“But-”

Caitlin stopped for only a second, looking straight into his eyes. “Vibe,” she said. “We leave him. We have to.” He didn’t say another word, but she saw his eyes look down in disappointment as they ran toward their bikes. She knew he was disappointed; the last few outbreaks had been contained by the CCPD before they got there, and now that they finally had the chance to save another Advanced, it was ripped away from them. Going a month and a half without a win was difficult. But if they didn’t get out of there now, they were going to lose a lot more than their lives in those cells.

The speedster still had a few seconds before he shook himself out of all of the ice, and then he would be hot on their trail, a bolt of lightning against the darkness of the abandoned streets. They mounted their bikes and flipped the engines on, revving just once to get them ready to go before shooting away from the scene.

“Do you think we lost him?” Cisco shouted over the roar of the wind in their ears.

No, she didn’t think so. And if the ever brightening road they were taking was any indication, she was right. He was still moving slower than usual, but she guessed his legs were still freezing, even if they weren’t covered in ice anymore.

“We need a path back!” she shouted and hoped that her comm picked up the sound. Cisco usually talked to Iris when they were riding; his helmet was equipped with a microphone, so she wouldn’t get the ear piercing rush of wind over the speakers. But they had to leave so fast he didn’t have time to get his helmet on.

“Take a right,” Iris said, her voice high and shrill. She was worried about them, of course. Anyone else would have realized what was happening and opened the cargo doors before they made a run for it, but not her. She wanted to make sure they were okay. “And then in four hundred feet, you’re going to cut through an alley on your right and then make a left onto the next street. Do you think you can lose him?”

Caitlin swallowed. “No,” she answered honestly. “Iris, you need to get out of the compound, okay?”

“I’m not going to abandon you,” Iris responded hotly. “Maybe if I just lead you through the city---”

Caitlin sighed. “That’s not going to work. This guy can make it around a block faster than we can cut through an alley.”

Cisco sped up beside her, quickly overtaking her bike. “We need to split up,” he said, his untied hair whipping around his face. “He’ll have to choose which one of us to go after, and that will buy the other person enough time to get back to the compound and help Iris if we need to.”

She thought about that. If this guy went after her, then fine; she would take that risk. But she wasn’t going to let him run after Cisco and possibly capture him. Letting the CCPD get ahold of an Advanced she didn’t care about was bad enough, but to let them get Cisco again on top of it would be unforgivable. Miracles don’t come twice. “No,” she said.

The bike next to her slowed down. They turned down the alley Iris suggested, and it was dark until they got to the other side. He wasn’t trying to outrun them, she realized. He was waiting for them to lead him back to their hideout. Iris told them another street to go on, and Caitlin again told her to get out of the compound and save herself.

“If you won’t let us split up, then Iris needs to use a grenade,” Cisco shouted over the comms. “If he comes in after us, it will affect him just as much as it does us.”

“No!” Caitlin and Iris said at the same time.

“She needs to get out of there, not help us,” Caitlin said.

“I’m not going to knock you guys out,” Iris protested. “And I’m definitely not going to leave you, so Caitlin, don’t suggest that again.”

Cisco made a noise of frustration that reminded Caitlin of a growl. “It’s the only way,” he said. “So either we do this, or we’re all getting taken in. And while we know what they will do to us, we have no idea what will happen to Iris if she gets caught.”

Iris started protesting again, saying that she wasn’t going to hurt them. The grenades Cisco developed were useful, but painful; they could knock out any Advanced in a concentrated area, but it felt like something was boiling her insides in the few seconds before she fully passed out. Cisco said it felt like he was falling apart, like his molecules were coming undone. They tried it once, when Cisco first made them, and decided it wouldn’t be useful out in the field if it was going to knock them out as well. But he’d stocked them in the cortex, just in case Iris needed something to protect herself from a rampaging Advanced. Or the two of them. Cisco hadn’t said it, but Caitlin knew that he made Iris keep them on hand just in case their powers started going out of control. He was more heroic than she was, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that she could lose control and accidentally drain all of Iris’ body heat. He knew that their powers were virtually untested and constantly growing, and neither of them would ever want Iris to get hurt.

“Iris,” Caitlin shouted, and she stopped talking. “You have to do it. Or else you get out of there and leave us behind.”

She heard Iris exhale. “I’m not going to leave,” she said firmly, and Caitlin hated her for being so stubborn. She wasn’t sure what Iris saw in her. Cisco, at least, she understood; both why Iris would want to keep him safe, and why he would want to be near Caitlin. But Iris’ unwavering belief in both of them---how she trusted Caitlin implicitly---that was confounding.

“Then grab a grenade and stand in the loading area. We can find our way back from here.” She heard Iris huff over the comm, but she didn’t say anything else, and Caitlin hoped that she would follow through with the attack. If she could knock them all out, then it would be much easier for Iris to get this new Advanced into a containment cell. It wouldn’t be outfitted for his abilities until Cisco could figure out what they were, but maybe the preliminary precautions would be enough to hold him.

Caitlin hoped so, anyway. Their compound wasn’t too far off from the warehouse they kept the bikes stored in, and if this new Advanced ran straight back to CCPD, she doubted there would be enough time for them to clear everything out. She trusted Cisco to grab Iris and run. There were a few weak spots in the fence that surrounded the city for him to get to the other side, and Iris could pass through any checkpoint without a problem. She just hoped that if the CCPD found Killer Frost, that would be enough for them to call off the hunt for Vibe. He was in custody for a few days. They had to know that his powers weren’t dangerous like hers, that he couldn’t kill as easily.

The bright light trailed behind them easily, following them through every turn and twist through the city. She wondered if he knew where he was, anymore, or if he was as lost as she felt the first time Cisco dragged her down to the warehouse he’d found. She and Cisco sped up for the last few miles, turning a corner abruptly and speeding up the ramp into the warehouse they stored their bikes. Caitlin looked around fervently, willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness so she could see where Iris was and make sure she was safe. The warehouse lightened as the streak ran toward them, and then Caitlin saw her: situated on the second floor next to the railing, one of Cisco’s grenades in her hand. She swung up the kickstand and dismounted quickly.

The cargo doors started to shut, and the man rushed in after them right before the door closed. “Killer Frost,” he announced loudly. “You are under arrest-”

Iris pulled the pin on the grenade. For a second, the whole warehouse was bathed in a bright light. Then Caitlin felt her organs burn, and she screamed as she collapsed on the ground, Cisco thudding onto the floor next to her. Right before she blacked out, she saw the speedster drop, too, his whole body twitching. 

* * *

 

Iris watched them all fall to the floor, one after another, and she closed her eyes for a moment. She tried not to picture the nightmares she had more frequently these days; the ones that showed more than just her best friend, but her two newest friends as well. Falling down, nearly dead, the sky inky with streaks of electricity running through the dark clouds. It took her at least a month to get over that particular nightmare the last time, and she didn’t want to fall back into the same routine she had back then.

The intruder, a man in a red leather suit, twitched for a few seconds after Caitlin and Cisco stilled. Iris wondered if it was because he was trying to fight the effect and stay conscious, or if it was because her friends knew what was coming and this new person had no idea. Maybe they were slightly more prepared to endure massive amounts of pain until they passed out. She felt bad, watching him writhe on the ground. He didn’t deserve this. None of them deserved this.

Caitlin’s scream still burned in her memory as she descended the ramp; loud and shrill and filled with pain. She shuddered, and remembered how her friend described the first time she and Cisco were hit with a grenade, how twitchy she had been for hours afterward when she got too close to where Cisco insisted they be stored in the cortex, as if they could go off at any moment. As if she would turn her back and feel that wave of pain hit her again. It was the only time Iris saw Caitlin even slightly scared for herself, in the entire six months they’d known each other.

Iris pulled out the secondary grenade she’d brought with her, just in case the first hadn’t been enough to knock out the intruder, and stared at it. It was small and black, a yellow trigger pin on one side. Before they tried it out, Cisco tried to give them a cute name (stingers, if she remembered correctly, or maybe yellow jackets; he latched on to the black and yellow color scheme and ran with it), but after seeing the effects, he just called it what they were: weapons. Grenades. These devices were dangerous, and Iris wished that Cisco never made them. But they were necessary to make him and Caitlin feel safer and more in control of their abilities. They thought it was a safeguard for her, but she knew. It was to help them cope, so they knew they weren’t unstoppable.

She grabbed the trolley cart from the base of the stairs and went first to collect their newest addition, grabbing him by the hands and dragging him as best she could onto the cart for easy transport. His feet were hanging off one edge and his head lolled inches above the ground on the other. Had she not known the grenades caused such a wicked headache, she would have been more careful with the amount of times she hit his head on the cement floor, but honestly, he wasn’t even going to realize what had happened. Iris glanced back at her friends and frowned. Caitlin’s skin was already turning blue, and a thin layer of ice began to form on the ground around her unconscious body. Cisco whimpered; she wondered what he was seeing this time.

Their compound was built in the shells of a few warehouses abandoned after the explosion and was designed to make it difficult to move from one building to another without proper identification. Cisco and Caitlin always left and came in through the loading dock of the far right building, where Iris was usually stationed in the far left warehouse, behind the few computers they were able to scavenge and purchase on the black market. In the center was the building that Cisco and Caitlin lived in, the one that held containment cells for all of the Advanced, if and when they caught them. Caitlin and Cisco also lived in containment cells that could be locked from the outside if necessary. Iris hated that they took so many precautions with themselves, that while they both trusted Iris and each other completely, neither Cisco nor Caitlin trusted themselves.

Iris walked along, the man still passed out on her trolley. The last time, it took twenty minutes for Cisco and Caitlin to wake back up after being hit with one, and judging by her stopwatch, she had about fifteen minutes left to get his guy situated in a containment cell and lock it, then go back and make sure Caitlin hadn’t frozen Cisco solid while passed out. She held out her hand at the door between the buildings, letting the scanner register her handprint. Cisco called it rudimentary, as if a machine he built from scraps they found in the city that could be loaded with handprints of hundred of individuals (if their team ever grew, he had said) was anything other than extraordinary. The door unlocked and opened on its own, and Iris apologized to the passed out man on her trolley as she banged his head against the wall three times before squeezing them both through the door.

“Seriously, though,” she said to him even though he was passed out and couldn’t hear a word she said, “you are freakishly tall. I’m going to need you to shrink, maybe lose some muscle mass or something. Because this is just ridiculous.”

He groaned back at her, and her heart sped up in momentary panic. She hadn’t considered the possibility that he would react differently to one of their grenades, but it could happen. His eyelids fluttered and she pushed the trolley with renewed vigor, passing by empty rooms and abandoned spaces on her way to the containment cells. She eventually made it, after going through yet another security checkpoint, and Iris looked at their empty row of containment cells. Her friends slept down another corridor, where there were three or four larger cells that could be modified slightly more easily, but these were for the Advanced that they pulled in off of the street.

The guy moved this time, and Iris jumped. She dropped him on the floor and backed out of the room, quickly punching in the code to seal the containment cell. The doors shut, and the keypad turned red (Cisco liked his flourishes), and Iris watched the man for a few seconds. Most of his body was covered, but there was something striking about it, and she had hazy memories of seeing it before. His eyelids fluttered open, and she took a huge step back, her pulse racing.

She had to get out of here, now, before he saw her. The Advanced weren’t really supposed to see her; they dealt only with Caitlin and Cisco when they were here, before they figured out what to do with them. Iris turned on her heel and tried to squash the feeling that she knew him from somewhere. He was probably a cop, she reasoned as she walked out of the corridor. She probably saw him before the explosion.

Iris heard someone call her name, and then the door shut behind her. She imagined it, that was all; there was no way he’d said, “Iris?” as she walked out of his field of vision. She ignored the chill up her spine.

By the time she made it back to the loading area, Caitlin’s skin was a sick blue, and Cisco was shivering, his breath visible above his mouth. She ran over to him and smacked him in the arm, and hated that his grenades were so powerful that it made both of them pass out for so long. “Come on, Cisco,” she muttered, and shook his shoulder repeatedly.

He took in a sharp, deep breath and his eyes sprung open. “G-god,” he stuttered, his teeth chattering together. “I am freezing.”

“Yeah, well, you know how Caitlin’s powers are when she’s not awake to modulate them,” Iris said, helping him to his feet. His skin was cold to the touch, which was disconcerting, but at least frost hadn’t started to form in his hair. “What are we going to do with her?”

He blinked, and rubbed his arms, and Iris pressed her warm hands to his shoulders to try and give him a little more body heat. “We can’t move her,” he said. “If we touch her, she could accidentally kill us, and she would never forgive herself if one of us was injured. Or dead.” He paused, looking thoughtfully at Caitlin’s unmoving body. “We could always try tossing the speedster on top of her, see if that wakes her up.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “We are not doing that, and anyway, I already moved him to a cell.”

“On your own? Iris---”

“Yes, on my own,” she said. “He was knocked out. I wasn’t in any danger. I swear, the two of you act like I’m completely incompetent.”

Cisco threw up his hands in mock surrender, and Caitlin sighed, another whoosh of freezing air exiting her lungs. Both Iris and Cisco shivered, and then he grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the door. “We can get her once she’s woken up,” Cisco said, ushering her through the door to the second part of their compound. “Until then, we can try and figure out what powers this new Advanced has. I mean, he moves faster than anything I’ve ever seen before, and he shook himself right out of Caitlin’s trap. Is he still passed out? Because I don’t know that an ordinary cell can hold him.”

“I hope it can,” Iris said, “because he was waking up when I dumped him in there.” She bit her upper lip and glanced over at Cisco. He was easier to deal with than Caitlin, especially when it came to her safety. He cared deeply about her, but Caitlin was protective to the point of obsessive with both of them. Cisco trusted her a little more to take care of things herself. “He, uh, also might have seen me. And recognized me.”

Cisco stopped in his tracks, using his grip on her wrist to turn her around and face him. “What do you mean, he saw you? And recognized you? Iris, do you know who this guy is?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly,” she said, catching sight of his frown. “I didn’t see the guy’s face, it was covered by his mask thing. But he must have seen mine. I think he might be an officer, someone my father works with.”

He sighed, and ran his free hand through his long hair. “Let’s just hope he thinks you were a hallucination, Iris,” he said. “I don’t want you to get in trouble---or worse---because of what Caitlin and I do here.”

“What we all do here,” Iris reminded him. “I broke you two out, remember? I am the reason you two are on the run from the law.”

“No, you’re the reason we’re alive,” he said. “If we stayed in that place any longer, who knows what else they would’ve done to Cait, or to me. We might have been brainwashed into a weapon like this guy. We owe you everything, Iris.”

She shook her head and laid her free hand on top of his arm. “You guys don’t owe me anything, and you know that.” Cisco looked at her and smiled lightly, and she smiled back at him. She didn’t even want to think what would have happened to him if the CCPD tried to use him and exploit him in the way they used Caitlin. “But do you really think this guy is brainwashed?”

Iris heard boots on the cement floor behind them, and she turned to see Caitlin with two heaters pressed into her palms walking up to them. “He has to be,” Caitlin said. “He was attacking his own kind.”

“So were we,” Cisco pointed out. “It’s kind of what we do.”

Caitlin frowned. “He was attacking his own kind to bring them into the government’s custody,” she said. “That’s worse.”

Cisco and Iris didn’t say anything for a moment; they glanced at each other, and then back at Caitlin in unison. The silence grew between the three of them. Caitlin held the heaters against her exposed skin, and sucked in a breath when one of them was bled dry of heat. “I need to get into my room soon,” she said.

“We should go talk to this guy, then,” Cisco said. “Iris, you go watch in the Cortex. Let us know if you see anything that we’re missing. You’re good at reading people.”

“I could go with you,” she said. She wanted to know who he was, and if he really did know her. And if he trusted her, if he recognized her, then maybe she would be able to get more information out of him. Maybe she could ask him about the things CCPD was doing behind closed doors. “You’re right, I am good at reading people. And if this guy really is brainwashed, or something, I could help. We’re in the compound. I don’t need to hide in here.”

Caitlin shook her head immediately. “Cisco and I do this alone,” she said.

“And you already said that…” Cisco started, glancing over at Caitlin. “That there could be _complications_. Remember? Do you really want to risk it?”

Caitlin looked between them. “What kind of complications?” she asked immediately. “What’s going on? Did that guy try and hurt you, Iris?”

Iris shook her head, and sighed. Cisco was right; if this guy did know her, then it would probably be worse for all of them. Right now, her involvement with the jailbreak of known criminals Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon was a secret. When she was out and about in public, no one tried to attack her. Her face wasn’t on the posters, her name never on the watch list. But it was hard for her to squash her curiosity down. She wanted answers almost as much as she wanted to stay safe. “I’ll watch from the Cortex,” she said. “Don’t be too hard on him. Remember, he is as much a victim as you two.”

Cisco nodded, but Caitlin pressed her lips into a thin, hard line. Iris knew that she didn’t believe it; for Caitlin, those who willingly allied themselves with the government weren’t innocent. Iris felt sorry for the guy; he was about to get a strong dose of nice cop and I-will-kill-you cop. And if he made the mistake of trying to lash out at Cisco, then, well, he had something else coming to him.

She heard Caitlin ask Cisco again what the complication was, and Cisco told her it was nothing. She walked back to the Cortex and sat down as Cisco and Caitlin approached the man’s cell, and he was definitely awake now. His uniform was still on, the CCPD emblem bright against the dark red of his suit. Iris stared at him, and she felt that familiar nag in her gut at his physique. One of her screens showed the man in his cell, and the other showed the corridor where Caitlin and Cisco stood, and she could see all of their faces. Or, the partial face that the mask allowed for the speedster.

For a second, he stared at the two of them and they stared back. Caitlin’s arms were crossed over her chest, and Cisco was watching him with a critical eye, and the man was looking between the two of them so quickly it almost looked like his face was blurring out of existence. “Killer Frost,” he said, his voice a boom through the speakers. “And you must be Vibe. Or should I say Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon?”

“It seems we are at a disadvantage,” Caitlin said. “You know who we are and what we can do, but we have no clue who you are. So tell us, before I make you tell us.”

Well, this wasn’t going to go well. The speedster stopped vibrating his face, and she saw him stand up straighter and push his shoulders back, puffing out his chest. “Are you threatening me, Killer Frost?”

“She’s not,” Cisco said quickly, and Caitlin cut her eyes to him in fury. “She just wants to know who you are.”

The man frowned, and Iris stared at his mouth. It was so familiar to her. The set of his jaw, the way his lip jutted out. She wanted to place it, but the only name she could come up with was impossible. They all waited for him to say something, but instead the speedster simply stared at them. “Hey,” Cisco muttered, his voice echoing from his comm up to Iris in the Cortex. “Are you getting anything?”

Iris sighed. “No,” she admitted. “I need him to speak more before I can try and analyze him, and you know that on the fly analysis is just inference and guesswork.”

“Who are you talking to?” the speedster demanded. “There’s someone else here, isn’t there? A woman? She’s here, isn’t she?” He looked between Cisco and Caitlin again. “I saw her earlier. Where is Iris?”

Iris gasped, and Caitlin moved forward, slamming her fist against the reinforced glass. Ice spread out from the impact point. “Who the hell are you?”

“I want to talk to Iris,” he said. “I won’t talk to anyone else. Bring her down here.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Caitlin spat, venom in her voice.

Cisco reached out and grabbed Caitlin’s shoulder, causing her to flinch and pull away. “We can’t do that,” Cisco said. “There is no one here by that name. There’s just us.”

The speedster groaned in frustration, and suddenly it was hard to see his form at all, he was vibrating so fast. “I saw her,” he said, his voice shaking and layering together, building into something that didn’t even sound human. He took a deep breath and slowly stopped, coming back into focus. “Look, I can break out at any time, okay? But I _need_ to talk to her. Where is she?”

Her heart sunk into her stomach, and her memory started to clear up. The sound of his voice, even so desperate as it was, was a comfort to her and she knew exactly why. “Even if there was someone else here,” Cisco said, “what makes you think we would let them down here without knowing who you are? You just admitted you can leave at any time. What if you tried to hurt them?”

The speedster stilled completely, and Iris stepped away from her console, starting toward his cell. “I would never hurt her,” she heard him say, his voice echoing around the room. “Not like you two.” It wasn’t that far from the Cortex to the middle building, where Cisco and Caitlin were, where he was. She broke into a run, and flew through the hallways down to the corridor they kept their Advanced. “---must have kidnapped her,” she heard as she opened the door. “She would never help you out if she had a choice.”

“They didn’t kidnap me,” she said. Caitlin turned to face her, furious, and Cisco glanced over at her without an ounce of surprise on his face. “I choose to be here,” she said as she stepped into view of the man in the cell. “Each and every day of my life, I choose to come in here with them and try and make this city safer for _everyone_ who lives here.”

The man in the suit stilled, and then, slowly, he moved his hand to his mask and pushed it off of his head. It hung behind his neck, and she cried out, looking at him. Studying his face. It had been so long since she’d seen him, and for months she thought she would never see him again. But here he was; alive, and moving around, and breathing, and not injured. “Iris,” he breathed, walking toward the class and setting a gloved hand against its surface.

She smiled weakly. “Hey, Barry,” she said. “It’s really good to see you again. The last time I saw you…”

“I know,” he said, quietly. “It’s been a long time.”

“I thought you were dead,” she said, trying to keep her voice light but failing miserably. His entire face collapsed; his mouth sagged and his eyes softened and he huffed out a breath. His hand curled into a fist against the glass, and he stared at her. She tried to get the image of him from the last time she had seen him out of her mind, trying to stop her brain from overlaying images of Barry bloody and heaving over the one standing before her. The one with broader, thicker shoulders, with eyes so green and so alert that they almost hurt to look at.

It wasn’t until Cisco cleared his throat that Iris remembered they were standing with her, around her; she looked over at him and then back at Caitlin, almost reluctant to keep her eyes away from Barry for too long. “So you do know him?” Cisco asked quietly, setting a hand on her shoulder.

She nodded just as Barry hit his fist against the glass. “Don’t you dare touch her, _Vibe_ ,” he said. “I swear if you hurt her-”

“We aren’t going to hurt her,” Caitlin said from Iris’ other side. “The Central City Police Department, on the other hand, wouldn’t hesitate to lay a hand on her.”

Barry sneered. “Yeah, right,” he said. “The CCPD is protecting people from Advanced menaces like you, _Killer Frost_. Or have you forgotten that you’re a murderer? Does Iris know that? Have you told your supposed friends what you did to land yourself in jail before you broke out?”

Ice exploded on Caitlin’s fingertips, and Iris stopped her from unlocking the door and strangling Barry. “Do you two mind if I speak to him alone?” she asked. Caitlin said no immediately, still glaring daggers into Barry’s skull, but Cisco nodded and told her they would be watching. He gently took Caitlin’s hand into his own, ice hitting his bare skin, and pulled her out of the corridor.

She and Barry stood in silence, surveying each other. It had been so long since she’d seen him last, and she could barely process that he was alive. Standing in front of her. There were so many things that Iris wanted to say to him, things that she had spent months writing in her head. But now that he was here, alive and breathing, she was too scared to say what was on her mind. She was scared to tell him about all of the things she’d done that she imagined him being proud of, when she couldn’t sleep at night. Like breaking Cisco and Caitlin out of the CCPD’s custody, or finding Advanced, rehabilitating them, getting them out if necessary. About standing up to her father. She didn’t know if she could tell him about all the times she missed him, or how much it hurt to see him die.

She remembered the way his entire body crumpled on the night of the explosion, how he was thrown back onto a shelf of chemicals in the lab. When she finally got through to 9-1-1, they told her it would be an hour before someone could come to get him. There was an explosion, they told her, as if she didn’t know. As if she hadn’t seen the blast through the window of the lab. She remembered the blood bubbling up from his mouth, and how he shuddered weakly before she felt his heart stop beneath her palm. She cried over his body until an EMT arrived and took him away.

Iris couldn’t ride in the ambulance. She wasn’t family.

“I know what Caitlin did to get put in jail,” she said finally, carefully. Barry furrowed his brow and frowned. She didn’t know what he expected her to say; she couldn’t read him as easily, didn’t know if the things that his eyes and his body told her now were true. How much had he changed, she wondered, in the year she thought he was dead? How much had she? “But she didn’t deserve what they did to her, Barry. None of the Advanced do.”

Barry frowned. “This isn’t a matter of deserving justice. We are all dangerous. Especially Caitlin Snow. Are you sure you know what she did to get herself thrown in jail, Iris? She bleeds the heat from people, kills them. She killed at least three people before the CCPD caught up with her. You need to stay away from her, Iris.”

“They tried to attack her,” Iris said quickly. “It was accidental, and it was self-defense.”

“You need to let me take them in, Iris.”

Iris laughed bitterly, and Barry’s brow creased at the sound. “Neither of them are going back with you to be locked up by the CCPD,” she told him. “I won’t allow it. I won’t let you.”

He cocked his head to the side. “But you’re fine with locking me up and keeping me here?” he asked hotly. “What’s so different about what you do and what we do, huh?

“What we do is lock people up if they’re dangerous,” she said. “What the CCPD does is much worse. Caitlin told me what happened to her. At least, the things she can remember. The things she can talk about. We may lock people up for a brief amount of time, but it’s mostly to keep the CCPD from capturing them. Have you ever wondered what happens to all of the Advanced that you go after?”

Barry rolled his eyes. “They are put in a cell,” he said, “until they are processed. And then they go before the judge, and are either ruled guilty or not. It’s justice, Iris. Due process and all of that.”

“Are you sure?” Iris asked. “Because I’ve heard that the CCPD experiments on the Advanced they have in custody. That your director does it himself.”

He pursed his lips. She watched him process this information, and wondered how Barry found his way into police custody. Had the government taken him like they did Caitlin? Did they strap him down to a table and slice into his skin to see how he healed, or if he felt pain in the same way anymore? “Even if I believed that,” he said slowly, “and I don’t, she still deserves to be locked up. And she broke herself out of jail and took another criminal with her. She needs to come back with me.”

“She would never hurt me,” Iris said. “Neither would Cisco.”

Barry growled, low and frustrated. He slammed his fist against the glass and she jumped away from him, her eyes alert with fear. He froze, his wide eyes searching her face for a second, and she stared back at him, the desire to run still burning in her legs. His eyes closed slowly, excruciatingly slow, and she watched him take a deep breath, watched him try and keep his emotions from chasing themselves across his facial features. “You don’t know that,” he said, quieter than she expected from him. “You can’t _know_ what they… what any of us will do, Iris. We’re powerful. _We are dangerous_. How many times---” he started, and then stopped, his fist opening against the glass. “If they don’t come with me, you have to. Okay? I can’t leave here knowing that you’re in danger.”

“Then I guess you won’t be leaving.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her, the edges of his mouth pulled downward, drooping. Barry stepped away from the glass and paced around his cell, moving just too fast for it to be natural. She watched him, furious and frustrated, afraid and amazed, her eyes tracing his every movement. The way he moved was so familiar to her but at the same time, he was someone completely different than the Barry she lost on the night of the accelerator explosion. He seemed to be talking to himself, muttering under his breath and much too quickly for her to understand any word that he was saying even if she could hear him.

She rubbed her hands over her upper arms and hugged herself. They were quiet, again; she stared at him with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and he looked back at her, moving toward the glass until one forearm was pressed against the glass of his cell, his head slightly dipped. Tears stung at her eyes but she didn’t dare cry, despite the mix of emotions swirling through her at the moment. She missed him, of course she did, but he was wrong about Caitlin and Cisco.

Barry sighed, and pulled back, breaking eye contact. Iris sagged, quickly wiping a tear from her cheek while he was busy staring at the ground. Her muscles were tensed and cramped, and she wanted nothing more than either to let him out and run into his arms or to run back to Cisco and Caitlin and never see him again. She squeezed her eyes shut. “This isn’t at all how I pictured seeing you again,” he said finally, quietly; more a whisper than something she was meant to hear.

She bit the inside of her lip and opened her eyes again, glancing up at him through wet lashes. “How did you picture it?” she asked. “Running into me at the coffee shop, surprising me with your miraculous recovery?”

He grinned a little, his eyes lighting up, finally, with something other than anger and indignation. “Something like that,” Barry said. She straightened, and blinked away her tears. “I don’t know. I always imagined I’d see you somewhere other than from behind the glass of a cell door. Maybe outside, in another city. I just imagined I’d see you as me, first. Not as the Flash.”

“The Flash?” she asked, the corners of her mouth begging to pull up into a full-blown smile. Anything to relieve the tension that had built up inside of her chest, to pacify the ache when she looked at his face.

He tapped the CCPD emblem on his chest. “It’s, ah… it’s my code name. What they call me in the field so as not to reveal my secret identity.”

She nodded, her eyes dropping to the tip of her toes. “It makes you sound like a superhero,” she told him, grinding her shoe into the floor. “Having a secret identity and all.”

He chuckled. “I guess I kind of am one. Just one that actually works with the law instead of outside of it.”

A bad taste covered her tongue, and Iris resisted the urge to make a face. She looked up at him. “Why?” she asked. “Why do you work for them? You call yourself a hero and yet you’re wearing the CCPD’s emblem proudly on your chest.”

“I don’t understand what’s so wrong with that, Iris,” he said. “I stop criminals. I bring them to justice. And your dad is a cop! You used to want to be a cop? Have you forgotten that?”

“Of course not!” She unfurled her arms and held them rigid by her sides, her hands curling into fists. “But I wanted to save people, Barry. And what you do? What my _father_ does? That’s not saving people. That’s hunting people down for being different.”

“No, for being dangerous,” he said. “We don’t hunt people down for being different, Iris. We go after people that are actively harming others or breaking the law.”

Iris laughed bitterly. “Really?” she asked. “Then what law did Cisco break to get him locked up? Do you even know?’

Barry shrugged. “I’ve heard stories,” he said. “Vibe was arrested for trying to escape the perimeter, and now he’s wanted for breaking himself and Killer Frost out of jail.”

“He was arrested because a family member called in a tip,” she said. “I know, because I read the police report two days after he was brought in. And then he had the audacity to go into hiding after that, and then eventually try and get out of this place, which did mean getting past the solid wall of concrete around our city. You’re right. Cisco was arrested exercising his right to leave. But he didn’t break himself out of jail, Barry.”

Barry’s eyes widened and he started at her. She heard the thunder of footsteps, and Iris knew that Caitlin and Cisco were coming to her right now. She knew that they would pull her out of here, try and talk her down. But she was lucky; they weren’t fast like Barry was now.

“I did.”

His jaw dropped softly and Iris watched him, her face set in stone and her arms crossing over her chest. Cisco and Caitlin stopped just on the edge of her peripheral, their chests heaving and their eyes wide. “You didn’t,” Barry said. “You wouldn’t.”

“She didn’t,” Cisco said, stepping up toward the two of them. His voice was frantic. “I broke the lock on the jail cell, I got Caitlin out. We met Iris later----”

“He’s lying,” Iris said, her eyes still anchored on Barry. Barry stared back at her. “I did it. I had the key, Barry. I know they’ve always wondered how Cisco blasted open the door without breaking the lock. That’s because he didn’t. I did. My dad told you how long it’s been since I’ve seen him, right? And how long has it been since they’ve been out of jail?”

Barry shook his head at her, but she could tell that he was doing the math in his head. It had been four months and six days since she’d broken them out of jail, and four months and three days since she’d last seen her father. He furrowed his brow and stared at the ground for a long while before finally looking back up at her again. She could see from his eyes that he knew she told the truth, that he and Joe had talked about why Iris had left. She doubted, though, that Joe told him the whole story. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m a criminal. An outlaw. And you, Barry Allen, have sworn that you joined the CCPD to stop criminals. You bring them to justice. I read restricted files on the computer of a detective and broke two prisoners out of their holding cells.”

“I work in the Advanced Taskforce division,” he said. “I don’t deal with problems like this.”

“I broke two Advanced out of jail,” she said. “That makes me your problem. You said you can break out of that cell at any time. Fine then, do it. Take me into custody.” Barry didn’t move. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you moving? Do you want me to open the doors?”

Cisco came up and grabbed her arm, jerking her eyes away from Barry’s face. Barry hit his palm up against the glass again. “What are you doing?” he hissed. “Iris, why are you telling him this?” But he knew why. His eyebrows were scrunched together and his lips were in a slack line, his lower one pushed out slightly. He wasn’t confused. He was upset.

Iris ignored him, pulling her arm out of his grasp and looking at her best friend. “Barry,” she said, her voice quiet, “I want you to promise me that you won’t tell anyone where we are.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You can. If not because it’s the right thing to do, then because it’s me asking you to do it. You trust me, right? Then don’t let them get hurt because of me.”

“Iris-”

“Barry.” Iris walked right up to the glass, laying her palm over the outline of his gloved hand. He looked at her, standing so close, and swallowed. She looked back at him, and tried not to feel how much it hurt to manipulate him like this. It was to keep her friends safe, she knew, and she let that knowledge unravel the weight on her tongue. “Please. Promise me that you’ll keep our secret. Do it for me. To protect me. If not, they will arrest me, too.”

He closed his eyes and breathed in and out and in again. “I promise,” he said, his voice low. “I won’t tell anyone where you all are hiding out. I can’t promise that I won’t come after them, but… it won’t be here. That’s the best I can do.”

Iris walked up to the door of his cell and punched in the code, the reinforced glass doors sliding away. Caitlin shouted her disapproval as Barry stepped out of the cell. “You promised,” Iris said. “Remember that. Because if something happens to either of these two, if they are captured by the CCPD, then I swear I am going to go down to the precinct and turn myself in.” Barry nodded.

Caitlin, still standing toward the back of the hallway, crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at Barry. Iris could see her displeasure, her anger; she knew Caitlin didn’t trust him, that she didn’t think he would keep his promise. But despite the CCPD emblem on his chest, despite the differences that she could see in him, Iris trusted him.

“If you run out of that door and go back to them,” she said, her voice small, “you have to know we won’t be seeing each other again.” Her tongue felt like cotton against the desert of her dry mouth, but Iris swallowed anyway, willing something to stop the harsh scratch of her throat.

Barry froze, his fingers curled around the cowl hanging from his neck. He cut his eyes at her. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

“I am,” she said. “I want to save people, Barry, not hurt them. And as long as you are stopping us from helping citizens of this city feel safe and secure, then you get in the way of that. So yeah, I’m serious.”

They stared at each other for a moment, the gulf created by her words widening between them, but she wasn’t able to look away. He stepped toward her and pulled her into a tight hug, and she let her head drop onto his shoulder as he pressed his cheek against her hair. “I understand,” Barry sighed, letting go of her. Iris was immediately aware of the lack of warmth as he moved back and slipped his cowl on, covering his face.

She thought about the things that the explosion had taken from them all. A sense of normalcy in their lives. Their freedom. So much of the city. The accelerator exploded, and everything changed. Caitlin’s fiancé and Cisco’s family had left town as soon as they were able. Iris stared at her best friend, covered in red leather and barely recognizable, even to her, even though she knew that he was under there. She wondered what he had lost, if he counted her among the things that had been taken away from him. They had all lost something in the explosion; Iris just imagined she lost Barry in a very different way.

She turned away from him, and without looking back, walked out of the room. 

* * *

 

Caitlin marched past Iris and Cisco, who turned as soon as Iris did to follow her out. The moisture in the air around her fists swirled and shimmered, condensing into ice and forming a thin, protective layer around her skin. The speedster watched her, his lightning eyes tracing every movement of the ice clinging to her body.

“Killer Frost,” he said, his voice clipped and controlled. She saw the glint of a tear in his eye, but she didn’t care. She didn’t like him. She didn’t like the way he stood, didn’t like the cross of his arms or the emblem on his chest, and she didn’t like his attitude.

She touched his shoulder, and he recoiled immediately, rubbing at the layer of ice that formed even over his leather. “I want to make one thing clear, Flash,” she said, and he stopped rubbing at the chill. “If you in any way hurt Iris or Cisco, I will kill you.”

He crossed his arms and tried to look imposing. She wanted to laugh at him, to taunt him. To make him feel worthless for how much distress he’d caused both of her friends. “The same goes for you. If you hurt Iris, or anyone else for that matter, again, I will stop you. By any means necessary.”

_Good._ “You don’t scare me,” she told him.

She grabbed his arm and pulled him along with her, letting the chill settle into his bones and she led him to the nearest exit. He tried to protest and to pull away, but Caitlin held up her other hand covered in ice, and shot him the most frightening look she could muster. If Iris and Cisco needed her to take out the trash, then she was more than willing to do so. She just wanted to make sure that he understood her. Understood what she could do to him.

She opened the emergency exit, and let go of his wrist.

In a crack of thunder, he was gone, only the trail of a quickly fading light to even signify that he was once there. 

* * *

 

Cisco followed Iris out of the room, not even turning to check on what Caitlin was doing, stalking off after the speedster like that. Okay, so maybe he turned just a little, to make sure that she wasn’t going to make a popsicle out of the guy, but he really shouldn’t have worried; Caitlin may hate this guy, and have every right to hate him, but Iris didn’t hate him. And that was all that mattered in their books. Mostly what mattered. Because to be honest, the sight of tears in Iris’s eyes as she brushed past Cisco was enough to make him want to vibrate the speedster’s molecules apart, and he wasn’t even sure if he could do that.

He burst into the Cortex just moments after she did, making a beeline for her as Iris collapsed into the most convenient chair. Her head dropped into her hands and his heart dropped into his stomach, watching the way her shoulders shook and her head bobbed up and down. He had seen Iris cry plenty of times before, which certainly wasn’t a good thing; he and Caitlin both hated it when she cried, when they couldn’t do anything to protect her from the shitty world that the explosion had given them. Like when a kid they tried to save ran out on them and got arrested trying to cross over the fence, or when their mark refused to stay with them, refused to be helped whatsoever.

And he was definitely not going to forget the time when she cried about Bette, who left the compound because she thought she shouldn’t be around people, thought that it wasn’t safe for her to be around so many things that she could potentially explode; him and Caitlin found her body in an alley a few days later. Iris cried, and insisted they have a funeral, some kind of recognition for the friend they lost. Bette would have been grateful for that, he assumed; she had stopped seeing herself as human before she came here.

Nearly all of them did. Probably a result of the fear and distrust sowed by the government, of the manhunts and the wall around Central City designed only to keep Advanced inside the gate and the way they were treated. It kept them all from feeling like they deserved to be alive, like they deserved to live a life that wasn’t constantly evading the government or trying to keep their head down.

But none of those times really compared to this one. Yeah, she was always distraught when people left, or when people couldn’t be saved. And Bette was so hard on all of them; she was one of the first they really got to know, one of the first they tried to save, and she ended up dead. All of those times, Iris cried. But she always tried to cry away from them, like her grief wasn’t real unless it was in front of other people, like she could hide it and contain it if it happened when she was alone.

Now she was here, crying in front of him, shaking and sobbing and curling her hands around the sides of her chair. Now, her grief was everywhere, and he felt like punching someone out. That dude, whoever he was to her, was an idiot. To choose the police department over her, to decide to go back to them. He should be ashamed.

“I’m so sorry,” Iris told him. Cisco walked over to the chair and stood next to her, looking down. “I shouldn’t even be this upset. I feel like an idiot.”

Cisco reached out to her and set his hand on her back, rubbing soothing circles. “You don’t have to apologize, Iris. Don’t apologize for feeling something.” Iris leaned against his side and he let her cry against him, let her reach out and take on of his hands into her own. His leather jacket was unzipped and pushed back so she could cry onto the soft cotton of the t-shirt he wore underneath. She cried, and she cried, and Cisco moved his hand from her back to her hair, brushing it out of her face.

Eventually she calmed down, her sobs sputtering out to heaving breaths and finally to something calmer, something sadder. Like she’d cried out all of the water in her body, as impossible as it was. “So that’s your best friend?” he asked. “The guy you always talk about.”

He felt her nod against his side. “Yeah. I thought he was dead.”

“I heard,” Cisco said. “That sucks. That you, you know, thought he was dead, and that it turned out he was very much alive but just working for the enemy. Both of those situations suck.”

She laughed a little, and Cisco felt slightly better. He wished that he could take all of her sadness away. “We grew up next to each other,” Iris said, even though Cisco didn’t ask for any kind of explanation. “Barry’s been a constant in my life for so long, you know? This past year has been hell without him. And yet, I don’t know that having him back is any easier. I… I wish it were under different circumstances. That he was just another Advanced that we picked up. Not one that was actively hunting you guys.”

He moved his hand from her hair to her shoulder. Cisco wasn’t sure what to say, what he could do to make her feel any different. He couldn’t convince that guy to do anything else, like come over and join them.

“This is going to sound completely cliché,” she said, “but I’ve always had a crush on him. I know, I know, me crushing on the boy next door. How embarrassing! But all of our lives, I was too afraid to say anything to him, and then it was too late. And now that he’s back, that I’ve seen him with my own two eyes, it still feels like it’s too late. That he’s changed so fundamentally that he’s not the same boy I’ve loved my whole life.”

“It’s not,” Cisco said, glancing over at the monitor. Since Cisco was in the Cortex, the security feed was streaming video of Caitlin, leading the speedster out of the compound, her lips blue and her fingers wrapped around his wrist. “Iris, he may be working for the CCPD, but he’s not a bad person. Or, at least, he doesn’t give off that vibe.”

She rolled her eyes and looked up at him, a tiny little grin on her face. “So you can read people’s thoughts and feelings now? That’s a handy shift in abilities.”

Cisco shrugged, and winked at her. “What can I say, I’m all about the convenient power upgrades. Makes for much better gameplay.”

“That makes it sound like we’re playing on easy, Cisco.”

He wiggled his eyebrows and smiled. “Who says we aren’t?” he asked. “This world we’re in? It’s a cakewalk. Totally playing on the easiest of easy modes. It’s a little disappointing, actually.”

She laughed again, fuller and more genuine; the noise bubbled up from her and spread a full smile onto her face. “But seriously,” he said. “That guy. I’ve seen him before. Not here, not in this world, but in my visions. He’s never a bad person, Iris, not that I’ve seen. And he is nearly always with you.”

Iris was pensive for a moment; she sucked in her lower lip and stared out toward the wall. “That’s a nice thought,” she mused, not looking at him. “Me and Barry together. I wish that could happen to me, you know? That I could be the lucky Iris for once. But I just don’t think that’s going to happen. Not in this universe, anyway.”

They were quiet but together, and eventually Caitlin joined them though she kept her distance. Iris may have been finished crying, but a few tears still escaped when she laughed or when she thought about something, and they knew from experience how much of a pain it was when your tears spontaneously froze on your cheek. For him and Iris, anyway; Caitlin only got frustrated when the few tears she cried turned to ice the moment they left her duct.

Iris fell asleep in the chair, her head nestled up against Cisco’s side as he perched on her armrest. He wanted to move, but he also knew that if he moved she would jerk awake and then insist she had enough sleep before making herself coffee and getting to work, scouring the airwaves for any news of another person to help. He would often find her at night with the screen on and a pot of coffee next to her, listening to the police scanner and looking through the feeds of cameras posted around the city.

Caitlin handed him a tablet, and Cisco flicked through the various security settings on their mainframe and in the compound. The signal disruptors were still working; there was no way the CCPD could have heard anything from Barry’s communicator, if he had one. And a tracking device that wasn’t hooked up to the mainframe in the Cortex would have shorted out immediately upon entering. He wished he could expand that tech past the walls of their hideout, but he had to make due with the supplies they found left in the city and after a few months, nearly all of the good equipment in even Star Labs was gone.

He checked the strength of the firewalls on their server, careful not to move too much so he wouldn’t disturb Iris. There were a few troubling attempts to get into their system but so far none of them were successful, which was good. His computer programming skills were fine but they weren’t good enough that he could write new firewalls while someone was breaking down his old ones. They didn’t keep any personal information on these computers, but they broke enough laws just by having their computers that discovery would lead to an immediate investigation.

“I don’t trust him,” Caitlin said finally, her voice quiet; she didn’t want to wake Iris either.

Cisco chewed the inside of his cheek and stared at the tablet screen. The motion detectors around the building were nearly impossible to fool, but he hadn’t tested them out with someone’s speed like Iris’s friend, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t worried Barry was going to break in and carry Iris away without any warning. “I know,” Cisco said. He looked back at her. “I don’t, either. But there’s not much we can do as long as he doesn’t tell people we’re here. And if we went after him ourselves, or hurt him while out on a mission, then I don’t think Iris would forgive us.”

Caitlin sighed, her eyes falling from Cisco to Iris. “He’s important to her,” she said simply. “The first Advanced to work for those people, and he’s important to her. Now she’s going to be obsessing about how to help him, too.”

“She’s a good person,” Cisco reminded her. As if either of them really needed reminding that Iris was a decent human being. “She would try and help him even if she had no idea who he was. It’s just who she is, Cait. She sees the good in people and she wants to save them. Just like she did with us.”

The room temperature dropped a degree as Caitlin sighed again, her head hitting against the back of the chair. “I know,” she said, her lips curving around the words. “She’s insane. At least when it comes to me. But it’s not hard to see the good in you, Cisco, no matter what you think when you can’t sleep at night.”

“Same for you,” he said, watching her. “It’s not hard to see the good in you, Caitlin.”

She smiled, her lips barely moving upward. “That’s not true,” she said, and stood abruptly, “but it’s kind of you to think so.” He closed his eyes and bit back the retort on his tongue, the one that he knew would set off another argument with her. About her being a hero in spite of her flaws. “You should probably get some sleep. I’ll take watch tonight.”

He nodded. Cisco shifted slightly, and Iris fell away from him, still fast asleep. He bent down and lifted her up, one arm around her shoulders, the other under her knees. It was hard sometimes to remember how small she was, when she was standing behind the screens of the Cortex, shouting commands at them and leading them. But she was petite and tiny and vulnerable, and she felt it when he picked her up. Iris’s head fell onto his chest and he glanced back at Caitlin but she was too busy focusing on her screen and the heater pressed into her palm to notice him.

He walked out of the Cortex with her sleeping body in his arms, the door locking behind him as he moved toward the row of makeshift apartments he’d built. Iris had one here for when she couldn’t make it to her own apartment, which was pretty much always these days. He set Iris down on her bed and covered her with a blanket before leaving her room and walking to his own. He sometimes wondered what would’ve happened to him if he had left right after the explosion, after Dante found him in the backyard under that tree. A few people left, but the mass migration didn’t happen until after it was revealed that people with powers developed in the wake of the explosion, and by that time they were screening nearly everyone who tried to leave. Anyone who had the gene for abilities, latent or developed, and tried to leave was taken into custody. It helped nothing, though, to think about how things could’ve been different if he wasn’t here, if he hadn’t developed abilities, if the explosion hadn’t happened. If he had been anything in life other than a disappointment to his family.

Cisco punched in the code for his apartment door and walked inside. He peeled off his leather jacket (Caitlin was right, they needed real uniforms) and slumped into his workstation chair, letting his head fall into his hands. His hair was long now, longer than his mom ever really liked for him to have; it swung down from his shoulders into his face. He pushed it back and sighed. After the weird vision he’d had when Iris knocked him out, he doubted he would get any sleep tonight. It was always traumatic to see himself die, but this time it was worse than usual. He’d been with someone he very clearly respected, someone he loved, even. Cisco could feel those emotions coursing through his veins when the man approached him.

Usually, his deaths were meaningless and ordinary. Hit and run, drive-by, old age. Even the one vision where he overdosed on some kind of hallucinogen. But this one, it was betrayal. And it hit him, hard. His heart sped up as he remembered, and it was hard to keep the tears from spilling over as he recalled every single moment. From the day he woke up in the hospital after the explosion until now, he could always count on the godforsaken dreams, but this one was worse. And he remembered thinking, just for a second, that he needed Barry to get there. _Barry._ The guy that Iris knew, the one that he hadn’t met until tonight. _That guy._ Why couldn’t his dreams, these stupid visions, make sense for once?

He balled his hands into fists in his hair and sighed again, trying to focus on his breathing like Cait had taught him to keep himself under control. He counted to five, and then ten, and eventually hit fifty before his panic subsided and left him with twitchy hands and an overactive brain. Cisco smoothed out some of the plans he had been working on, and picked up the fabric that was stretched out over his desk. Insulated, designed to absorb sunlight and convert it into heat. Not that it would help them much anyway, seeing as most of their missions happened in the dead of night, and Caitlin refused to go out during the day if she could help it. But if he installed artificial sunlight lamps in her room, then maybe he could develop a way for the fabric to retain the heat.

After that, he could start adding on the armor, making sure it was thick over her chest plate and her torso. It would be a shame to get rid of the biker pants, but Caitlin hated that whole outfit, and he would never be able to convince her to keep the part that was most skin-tight. He’d toyed with adding onto that basic design, making tight but stretchable pants that fit easily into boots, yet had a light armor to protect her upper thighs. He had to keep those vulnerable parts of her safe.

Cisco almost snorted out loud. Caitlin Snow and vulnerable didn’t mesh well together in a sentence. Closed off, depressed, calculated and collected if somewhat detached from herself, self-hating; those described Caitlin Snow. But she hardly, if ever, let her vulnerabilities show to anyone, even Iris, and Cisco knew how hard it was not to spill your entire life story to Iris when she set down a mug of hot tea and a brownie she’d made.

“Cisco.” Caitlin’s voice echoed throughout his apartment and he jolted so bad that all of the papers on his desk went flying, along with many small pieces of machinery that were going to be a complete bitch to find later.

“Y-yeah?”

“I have a report coming through,” she said. “I need you suited up and in the Cortex in two minutes.”

He groaned. “We already went out once tonight, Cait. It’s four in the morning. Can’t we just let this one slide?”

He knew the answer, of course; they couldn’t. And he didn’t want to leave this person’s fate up to them, whoever they may be, because being in the custody of the CCPD was currently the lowest point of his life. He wasn’t even experimented on, not like Caitlin, but it was still terrible. Being abused, laughed at, treated like an animal. Yeah, not something that he’d actively wish on his worst enemy, not even the one dick from his college that could speak six languages and made sure everyone knew how intelligent he was.

Cisco pulled on his jacket and slipped the communicator into his ear, touching it twice to turn it back on. Her voice transferred from the speaker in his room to his ear. “A girl was spotted teleporting to the top of the perimeter, and then she was electrocuted by the currents up there. She escaped, but just barely. The CCPD’s been tracking her for a few miles.”

“Do we really want to go into another CCPD hotspot?” he asked. “If that guy is going to be there, won’t that be a problem? Iris will have a fit if she sees Barry and we fight him again.”

Caitlin was silent for a few seconds. “There’s no need to wake Iris,” she said carefully. _Right._ So they were going to do this one off the books, so to speak. They had done a few missions without Iris before, when she couldn’t make it, or when they knew it was going to end ugly. But he didn’t like it. Caitlin didn’t, either. “And anyway, the CCPD’s tracking another Advanced right now, too. A guy that can control the weather. He’s in the process of destroying one of the food distribution centers right now, and it’s caused quite a panic one the other side of town. I don’t think they’re devoting many resources to a girl who’s just teleporting. Especially not their resident metahuman helper.”

He punched in the code and slid his hand over the sensor for a second before the door to the Cortex opened. “Just teleporting, huh?” he asked. “Do we have a description for her?”

“No, but I think we’ve come to the same conclusion on this one,” Caitlin said. “A teleporting girl who wants nothing more than to escape? It sounds like the one Iris ran into a few weeks back, the girl she wanted to help. If we play our cards right, then maybe we can turn this night around for her.”

Cisco joined her at the computer. “We’re going to have to navigate manually for this one,” he said, “since we aren’t waking her up. It won’t be precise, and it won’t be as fast to change course.”

She shrugged. “The Advanced seems to be moving in a fairly linear progression. Away from the wall and inward, toward the old hospital. I’ve heard rumors that it’s a hideout for some teens and young adults who’ve, ah, lost their way.”

“Rumors?” He looked at her, his eyebrow raised. “Who did you hear rumors from? You literally never talk to people outside me and Iris, and the occasional banter with an incompetent police officer.”

She shifted in her seat and looked away, blowing a gust of icy air out of her mouth. “I heard it over the police line,” Caitlin admitted. “And it makes sense. The hospital is well stocked with beds and bathtubs you can fill with water, plus a lot of other supplies that you’d need, like bandages and scalpels and sterilizing alcohol.”

He stared at her. “Over the police line? Really? If they knew about that large of a colony of Advanced, Cait, don’t you think---”

“Look, Cisco,” she said. “We either do this, or we don’t. I say we go in. I say we save a girl. For Iris. And for the rest of them.”

He thought about it for a second. If the hospital really was a hideout for Advanced teenagers and that wasn’t just some backwards guess by the Advanced Taskforce, then maybe gaining this girl’s trust would open them up to saving a lot of other people who needed their help. And Iris would be really disappointed in them if they didn’t even try. Especially once she heard it was the teleporting girl she’d met. “Okay, we do this. But I’m routing the secure CCPD line into our comms, which means we’re gonna hear a ton of outside chatter about all number of things. And it also means we’re going to have to keep quiet, or else they will know we’re listening. Think you can stay focused?”

“Of course _I_ can stay focused,” Caitlin sniffed. But Cisco could see the beginnings of a grin pulling at her mouth, and he took that as a victory. “You should worry about yourself.”

“Whatever,” he said, streaming the line directly into their comms. They both winced at the sound of three or four people talking at once. The police communicators were set up a little differently, with each officer using a specific code to receive messages. But Cisco used the dispatch code, and so they heard it all. Loud noise reported. Possible Advanced sighting. Another one of the few shops left in Central City being burgled, probably for food.

She looked over at him and he nodded. They walked together, trying to make as little noise as possible as they went from the Cortex over to the loading dock where their bikes had been left, along with Cisco’s helmet. He guessed it was a good thing that neither of them bothered to undress after their last mission. Maybe, once he finished with that better suit of hers, she would just stay in it all the time, except when he was cleaning it. Or maybe he should just make multiples. With the kind of work they did, it was possible that her suit would be torn or damaged in some way. Oh, that hurt him to think about, and he wasn’t even done with the design yet. He’d have to improve durability.

Caitlin hit him on the arm, and Cisco jerked back into reality. Mission. Right. He picked his helmet up off of the ground where he’d left it, and they both tapped their comms twice to turn them off while they started and revved up their bikes. “Ready?” Caitlin asked.

“I’m always ready,” Cisco lied, and they turned their comms on again.

For the second time, he and Caitlin shot out onto the streets, cutting through the stillness of the night. It was always eerie, coming out so late after curfew. There were hardly any people out, especially with the increased police presence as of late, and the ones that were awake and outside at this hour had the good sense not to make enough noise to alert the security cams that they were coming out. They, of course, didn’t know that Cisco had set the cams near the compound on a continual loop, playing feeds from other cams in the old warehouse district focused on abandoned buildings.

Even with his helmet on, the speed at which they were riding kept him from feeling the effects of a few sleepless nights in a row. The thrill of adrenaline, the only thing keeping him from crashing. Yikes.

He and Caitlin took the obvious backroads, not able to venture down alleyways and possible shortcuts without Iris’s watchful eye and pleasant voice in their ear. From what he could parse out from the police line, the Advanced girl was still moving in a fairly straight line, honed in on Caitlin’s old workplace. Which was kind of a good thing, because as it turned out, Caitlin knew the quickest way to the hospital from pretty much every corner of the city. They cut down a few back roads and barely missed a patrol car that turned onto a street just as they were turning off, but really, he was surprised at how easy it was for them to get there. Maybe it was the late hour.

“We have the girl in our sights,” he heard one of the officers say. “We are ready to shoot.”

Caitlin sped up and Cisco followed suit, revving up his bike and flying down the road after her. They slowed down as they rounded the corner, and then another one, before they were only a block away from where the girl was supposed to be.

He could see her, the blood on her face visible even from his distance. She looked hurt, and there was a man pointing a gun at her from behind a squad car. A single squad car. Other than that, visibility was low, but with only a single squad car, there wouldn’t be a problem. They could talk to the girl and convince her to come with them after they knocked this guy out.

He and Caitlin stepped off of their bikes and he put the kickstand up, pulling off his helmet. He saw the girl frown, and then she mouthed something that he couldn’t make out before she was gone, not even a cloud of smoke left behind.

“Targets acquired,” he heard, and Cisco turned to look at Caitlin. She stared back at him, wide eyed. The officer behind the squad car door turned his gun on them.

“Frost,” he said. “I think this is a trap.”


	2. Part 2

It took all of two seconds for floodlights to spring to life around them, shining so brightly into his eyes that they started to water. He blinked rapidly, willing his eyes to adjust to the light so he could see what they were up against. He had only seen one cop before but it was possible there were others, some in the abandoned buildings near the hospital or in the hospital itself. And what about the Advanced that the CCPD used to lure them here? Was she working for them, too? It was stupid of he and Caitlin to do this, stupid of them to trust that they could go undetected, especially after Barry had been in their compound. He was fast. He could’ve run by their computers and seen their set up, or inferred that they had broken into the system to track down their marks. He could’ve been a spy. Or maybe he thought he was doing the right thing, for Central City. And for Iris. 

“Caitlin Snow,” someone said through a speaker, their voice booming around the street. Cisco winced and covered his ears. If the CCPD was aiming at complete sensory deprivation, they pretty much succeeded. “Cisco Ramon. You are under arrest. Stand down, or more aggressive action will be taken.” 

Cisco’s heart started pounding. They were surrounded. Completely and totally surrounded. Every direction was bathed in the brightest fucking light the CCPD could muster, and it felt like every floodlight they owned was out and representing tonight, trying to make sure that he would never be able to see again in his life. And Iris wasn’t there to guide them from a far off camera, if she could even access them, or use their tracking devices to get them far away from this street. It was impossible to see anything that was going on. He didn’t know how many officers there were, or what they were holding, or whether or not they had Barry with them. Was the other Advanced, the guy that reports said could control the weather, some kind of ruse? Just another juicy piece of bait to help lay their trap? He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He tried counting to five, and then ten, and none if it helped, but he tried it anyway. Having a panic attack wasn’t going to help him right now. He needed to be focused. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and tried to listen for Caitlin.   

He reached blindly around him, finally finding Caitlin’s already freezing cold skin. “Frost!” he called, yanking her toward him. He heard the hard thud of her boots against the asphalt as she stumbled toward him. “Come on, we have to get out of here.” Cisco started pulling her toward their bikes, one arm around her wrist and the other outstretched so he wouldn’t stumble right into their escape plan. They probably looked like idiots, but he didn’t care. 

“We have you surrounded,” the voice said again. “We will take you in. Get on your knees and put your hands over your head. If you do not, we will take you down.” 

Yeah, _that_ threat was going to go over well. Caitlin stilled next to him, and her wrist flexed upward. He opened his eyes again, and realized the CCPD had turned off a few of the floodlights. The road was still bright, but he could see further; there were two cop cars stationed on the road on one end and he could barely make out a few officers walking toward them in the distance, more of a shadow than a human being. 

If he and Caitlin did nothing, he knew, then they were going to be arrested again. And if they were taken in, then it was going to worse than the first time. Iris wouldn’t be able to get them out, now that she cut off all ties with her dad and Barry knew to look for her. She would be caught and he and Caitlin would still be in custody. He couldn’t go back to the police. He couldn’t. The cells were bad enough last time, and if they decided to do with Cisco what they did to Caitlin, he would be driven insane. Or _die_. And they would be fine with that, totally fine with that. He couldn’t take that. They had to get out. 

Caitlin stopped walking and jerked Cisco back toward her. “What do we do?” he asked. His heart still thudded wildly in his chest. “If we can’t get out, what are we supposed to do?”

“We fight,” she said. “We take them out, and then we get Iris and run.” 

“Run where?” he asked. 

She frowned, her mouth set in a harsh, thin line. “It doesn’t matter where. All that will matter is we will be alive. Are we clear?” He nodded, and released her, trying to center himself in time to start fighting off the officers that had trapped them. With a quick jerk of her hand, Caitlin produced a short spear made of ice, and she tossed it at the encroaching officers. It landed right before their feet and smashed to the ground, freezing everything the ice touched. The men yelped and darted backward, toward the safety provided by their vehicles. 

Cisco turned around and stared down the officers that were trying to sneak up on them. He started toward them, concentrating on the power of the vibration he would need to shake apart the road they were standing on. Maybe he would aim a little bigger, and shake apart the ground under their cars. Or he could smash the car with a sonic boom and probably shatter the engine. That was always a possibility. The engines on police cruisers weren’t that great, anyway. It wouldn’t be any great loss to break them apart, and if he had the time, he might be able to salvage a few parts. 

“Woah, there,” someone said, and Cisco felt a powerful wind blow by him as he was punched hard in the stomach. A trail of yellow lightning followed a split second after the hit landed. “I think they told you to stand down.” Another hit to the gut, this time followed by a quick image of Barry’s smirking face. Cisco was pushed back an inch or two by the force, and he was pretty sure that asshole shattered one of his ribs. The pain momentarily dazed him, and he couldn’t concentrate enough to form a thought much less a sonic wave to slow his opponent down. Barry ran in a wide circle and came back, whacking Cisco hard enough on the side of the head that his comm popped out of his ear, and Cisco watched Barry step on it, crushing the delicate technology beneath his boot. 

His blood boiled. Hitting him was one thing, but wrecking his tech? Didn’t matter how Iris felt about him, this guy needed to be taken down a few pegs. 

Within a few seconds, he was surrounded by the lightning; Barry was running around him, creating a kind of vortex. At first, CIsco tried to spin around with him, wanting to catch him and grab him so he could shake him apart, but Barry was too fast. Of course he was. He couldn’t see the speedster but he could feel him every few seconds, when Barry must have broken out of the vortex to tap Cisco on the shoulder or slap him on the back of the head. Cisco tried to reach for him but was always too late to do anything other than open himself up for another blow. 

Barry elbowed Cisco in the back, right against his shattered rib. Cisco grunted and grabbed for his hand; instead, Cisco’s hand was curled into a fist by a hand he couldn’t see and slammed against his own jaw. “Why are you hitting yourself?” he heard Barry say, his voice distorted by his vibrating vocal chords. Barry laughed, paused for a second in front of Cisco, and then ran again, faster this time. 

The air around him picked up, moving faster along with Barry. The vortex started shifting the air and funnelling it upward, away from him. He tried to take a deep breath but it was like Barry was sucking the air straight from his lungs, trying to kill him on the spot instead of just take him out; he sputtered, his lungs desperate to get some kind of oxygen as the air got thinner and thinner. If he didn’t do something soon, Barry was going to knock him out. “And your file said you were smart,” Barry taunted. “This is a little disappointing, actually. Why she would team up with people like you and Killer Frost, I have no idea.” 

Cisco snarled, focused all of the power he could muster, and cracked his hands together, the sound stinging his ears. Barry stumbled and lurched forward, slamming against the ground and rolling a few feet on the pavement. Cisco took a deep breath and relished the oxygen filling up his lungs, watching the speedster. 

“How about you stand down, dickwad,” he spat, glaring at the man on the ground. Barry looked up at him, and then glanced down at his feet, before getting back up and running again. “Really? You’re gonna try that again?” 

The blur moved away from him and then started running back toward him, and Cisco concentrated on another sonic wave. Barry again slowed down, only barely able to stop himself from falling before Cisco was running up to him. He backhanded Barry across his jaw, a loud boom following in the wake of his hit. Barry skidded back, immediately clutching his already red and slightly swollen jaw. 

“I think I’ll call that one the sonic backhand,” Cisco said. “Specially crafted to stop assholes in their tracks.” It wasn’t quite a sonic boom to the face, but Cisco couldn’t help but add a little bit of vibrational flair to that last hit. 

If that douche thought he could just run and beat up on Cisco, he had another thing coming. Cisco had been in more than a few fights, both growing up and after the explosion. An asshole in red leather wasn’t going to stop him. “You want another one?” he quipped, staring at Barry. “Because I will be glad to hit you again for selling us out just hours after she trusted you enough to let you out.” 

Barry rolled his eyes. “I didn’t sell you idiots out. When I got back from being illegally held by you and your associate over there, the plan was laid out. I guess you pissed someone else off tonight.” 

Cisco marched over to Barry and grabbed his arm; his hand was vibrating at a frequency that he could feel was disturbing the speed Barry possessed. “Shit, man,” Barry yelped, trying to wrench his arm free from Cisco’s grasp. “That hurts. What are you doing?” 

“I don’t believe you,” Cisco said. “We’ve been operating for months without anyone catching on to what we do or how we do it, and you expect me to believe that you didn’t say anything?” 

“I don’t care if you believe it or not,” Barry said, shoving Cisco back and yanking his arm out of Cisco’s grip. Cisco steadied himself, his mouth set in a deep frown. “I don’t expect criminals to understand telling the truth.” 

He rolled his eyes. “I’m about as much of a criminal as you are a hero,” he said. Barry sneered at him, and then took off again, creating a gust of wind in his wake. “Which means I’m not one!” Cisco shouted. “In case you didn’t get that!” 

He heard someone scream behind him, and Cisco spun around. Caitlin was advanced toward a guard whose shoes appeared to be encased in ice. The man screamed again as Caitlin produced a ball of ice in her hand, and held it over him. He fell back and covered his face, begging her not to do it. He trusted Caitlin not to give into the desire she had to be warm by bleeding the heat from those whom she believed to be a threat, but at the same time, he also knew that she wanted to get out of here and away from the officers.   

Caitlin just stared at the cop as he whimpered and started crying, the tears freezing the second they hit the ground. She lobbed it over the guy’s head, and it exploded against the metal of the car. The officer who had been using it as a shield hissed when the metal chilled, and she dropped her gun against the ground. 

“Let us pass,” Caitlin said. “Let us get out of here, and I won’t freeze you guys to your cars.” 

Cisco saw Barry run past him too late to react, and Barry slammed his shoulder against Caitlin’s back, sending her flying into one of the sheets of ice she’d created on the ground. She slammed against the ice, cracking it in the process, and Cisco was pretty sure he heard her arm snap as she attempted to break her fall. She didn’t scream, but she did look disoriented for a few seconds before she tried to get up. 

Barry stopped a few feet away from her, his jaw looking better already. “You should watch your back, Frost. Or can I call you Snow? Since you’re going to be in police custody soon, I figure we should get to know each other a little better.” 

“What?” Caitlin shot back as she staggered to her feet. Cisco ran over to help her stand. “Are you going to be in jail with us, too? So nice to hear the CCPD is finally treating all of us dangerous Advanced the same.” 

Sirens roared in the distance, and Barry grinned. “Looks like our reinforcements are arriving. You won’t be able to last much longer, Snow. Your arm is useless now. Did I break your elbow? Do you want me to dislocate your shoulder to match?” 

She lifted up her left arm and produced a thick layer of ice over it, holding the bone in place. “My ulna, actually. But I’ll drain you of your body heat before you get close enough to touch me again.” 

He laughed, and disappeared back into a blur of lightning again. “Is that so?” he asked, running at them. “Because I’m pretty sure---” 

Cisco raised his arm and used another sonic wave to blast Barry right out of his stupid speed force. Barry spun around for a second, bewildered. What, did he think that he would only have to fight one of them at a time? Barry should’ve known that fighting one of them meant taking on both Caitlin and Cisco. Caitlin lobbed an ice ball at Barry. It hit him on the back, the ice smacking him with enough force to bruise him at least. “Are you okay?” Cisco asked, glancing down at her ice over arm. The sirens were louder now, probably about a block off. If they were going to get out, they needed to go now, and with her arm frozen like they, they were going to have to take his bike. Soon, there were going to be who knows how many officers around them, and he wouldn’t be surprised if they had another Advanced on their side.

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice clipped. “Let’s just get out of here.” 

He felt the rush of pain before he registered the gun shot. Cisco grunted and reached up toward his right shoulder, blinking in surprise when it came back wet with blood. Barry was right, damn him; they really did need to watch their backs. “Vibe?” Caitlin asked, turning toward him. “Oh my god, Vibe. They actually… they _shot_ you. You’re bleeding.” 

Very astute observation, he wanted to say. But the words weren’t forming correctly in his mouth, and he instead said, “Yeah, I’m bleeding. And it really hurts.” He looked up at her. In all of the times they had gone up against people with guns (police and criminals both), he had never been shot before. She had, a few times, but Caitlin just froze the wound over with ice until she was able to sew it up herself. He wondered if she meant to freeze his wound, too. That didn’t seem like a great option. It might stop the bleeding but it probably would give him frostbite, so that was a bad idea. Right? “Is it bad?” he asked. “Because it feels like it’s bad. Really bad.” 

She shook her head too quickly for it to be anything other than bad. “No, it’s fine,” she said. “The bullet went right through, so we don’t have to worry about it making it’s way into your heart or lungs. We just need to get you out of here so I can disinfect and close the wound.” 

The sirens stopped. “I don’t know that we’re getting out of here that fast, though,” he said, still disoriented. “And I’m not just going to leave the Vibemobile behind.” 

“Don’t worry about the stupid bike,” Caitlin hissed. “Worry about yourself. I will get us out of here. Do not move.” 

She turned toward the officers that presumably shot at him and threw another ice spear. It grazed one officer on the arm, and Caitlin charged forward, another ball of ice already forming in her hand. Air whooshed past him and he saw the trail of lightning heading for her. Caitlin pretended to throw the ice at the officers, and spun just in time to hit Barry square in the chest with it as he slowed down to hit her. 

“I told you that you wouldn’t get close enough to hit me again, Flash,” she said. Small, spiked icicles formed on her fingers and she threw them like darts, two of them stabbing him in the right shoulder, right about where Cisco had been shot. Barry pulled them out and took off again. 

Officers poured out of vehicles behind Caitlin, each of them holding weapons which they pointed at he and Cait. There were a lot of officers, a lot more than he thought were even on the police force. They must have pulled the Advanced Taskforce and the regular beat cops off their rotations just to take them down. Or was he just seeing double? Could getting shot in the shoulder make you see double? “There’s too many,” he mumbled, trying to count. “Frost, there are too many officers here. We can’t get out, we can’t leave!” 

“We will!” she said, spinning to look at him. She was shaking, he realized. Caitlin was shaking. And it definitely wasn’t because she was cold. “We are going to get out of this.” A few of the officers ran past the barricade they were busy making, and she blasted the ground in front of them with ice, halting them. One accidentally stepped on it and slipped, hitting his elbow hard against the ground.

 He was a numbers guy. Well, kind of. He was a science guy, and he once studied engineering at Central City University, and engineering required a lot of numbers. And the numbers, in this situation, weren’t looking good. “I don’t think that we can---” 

“I can’t let them take me, Cisco!” she half-shouted, her voice on the edge of hysteria. Her eyes were wide and darting around, trying to take in every officer with a gun pointed their way. He grit his teeth and tried to ignore the throb in his shoulder. “I can’t go back there. I refuse to go back there and see that man.” 

Ice swirled around around her. The moisture in the air condensed and moved with her, encasing her with sparkling ice. Her lips were already blue, her skin was looking paler and colder than usual, and the tips of her normally brown hair were starting to ice over in her panic. One of the officers fired a warning shot in their direction and Caitlin screamed, frosty air flowing from her mouth. She fell to her knees and smashed a ball ice against the ground. Little wisps of frozen water condensed in the air and fell to the ground, and Cisco could feel the temperature on the street drop degree by degree. 

The fingers of Caitlin’s unbroken arm splayed out on the ground and he could tell that she was coating the area around her with a thick sheet of ice. She was building her own perimeter to keep the officers out. To keep everyone out. Cisco watched the cold creep over the asphalt, covering it in layers and layers of frost. 

“What’s going on?” Barry called from somewhere behind him. “What is she doing?”

He wasn’t quite sure how he did it, but Cisco reached out and hit Barry right as he passed, knocking him off kilter once more and stopping him. “Do not approach her,” Cisco said. “If you touch her, she’ll kill you.” 

“What is she doing?” Barry repeated. Both of them stared at her, watched her as she shook. The ice she was using to cover the ground was starting to rise off the asphalt in some areas, layers upon layers of condensed and frozen water. She was trying to build a fortress of ice, something to keep her safe and keep the officers out. 

Cisco frowned. “She’s freaking out,” he said. “What does it look like? She would rather kill herself and everyone here than go back.” He heard Barry’s sharp intake of breath, but he didn’t even give him the chance to answer before he started walking toward Caitlin, taking care as soon as he stepped onto the ice. He could feel the chill through the sole of his boot. His shoulder still burned with the pain of his gunshot wound, but Cisco had other things to focus on; he had to ignore that pain, now. He didn’t have a choice. “Frost,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. She didn’t even look up at him; she hugged herself in the middle of a swirl of ice and snow. “Caitlin!” he shouted. 

She looked up at him, eyes wide. The ice immediately halted, though the frozen storm around her still raged. “Cisco,” she said, “you need to get away from here. Run. I’ll keep them away from you. I’ll freeze them all. But you need to get Iris and run, okay?” 

He shook his head. “I’m not leaving you, Cait,” he said. She sighed and looked away, and it dropped another degree. 

“Caitlin Snow,” an officer said over a loudspeaker. “Cisco Ramon. Give yourselves up. We have you surrounded, and we are currently moving in on your hideout.” They repeated the address of the compound over the loudspeaker, and Cisco’s blood ran cold. “Even if you did escape, there’s nowhere to go.” 

He and Caitlin looked at each other. The snowstorm that had built around her dropped to the ground and she stood up. “We have to go,” she said, tears forming in her eyes and freezing as they rolled down her cheeks. 

He swallowed. “We can’t,” he told her. “We’re not fast enough. But---” 

“No. No! I don’t trust him,” Caitlin said. 

“But Iris does,” he said. “And we can’t just leave her there, Caitlin. Not after everything she’s done for us. They… they might kill her. Without knowing who she is.” 

Caitlin closed her eyes, and balled her good hand into a fist. Then she nodded, barely noticeable. He turned and walked quickly back to the scarlet speedster, who had been watching all of this go down. It pained him to even think about asking Barry for help, but Iris saved them once. Actually, she saved them repeatedly; every day that they felt like they were less than human, she saved them. She believed in them, and protected them. Making sure that she was safe was worth the cost. “Barry,” Cisco said. 

“They’re moving in on your compound,” Barry breathed. “Is… is she?” 

“Asleep. Still in there. It might take them a while to get in, but there’s no way she’d be able to get out without being caught. Iris needs you, okay?” Barry bit his lower lip and looked between Cisco and Caitlin. “You have a choice. Either you save her, and let us take our chances with the officers, or you stop us and you leave her to whoever finds her. She might resist, Barry. They might think she’s one of us.”

Barry looked back over at Caitlin for a second before nodding. He took off in a gust of wind, and Cisco turned back to face his partner. He wouldn’t be able to disable the compound’s security measures from a distance, so he hoped that Barry would be fast enough and smart enough to inside and help Iris. 

He walked toward her, his shoulder still bleeding. “What do you think, Frost?” he asked. “Can we take them and get out of here?” 

“Yes,” she said, uncharacteristically confident. “Or we’ll go down trying.” 

* * *

For a moment, she was confused. Iris didn’t remember falling asleep, and she certainly didn’t remember setting an alarm to wake her up, but she reached up to the night stand anyway and groped around in the dark to find something to turn the alarm off. If she had to listen to that annoying screeching sound for one more second, someone was going to be hurt. Her hand fell into empty air, and she tried moving it around, getting more and more confused when she couldn’t even find her night stand. 

She cracked an eyelid and blinked a few times, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness that surrounded her. The room was mostly bare, save for a desk, a chair, a houseplant she’d brought in a few weeks ago that was certainly _not_ dying, despite what Cisco said, and a few changes of clothes. Enough to constitute practically half of her closet. She was still in the compound, she remembered, and that meant that the alarm going off wasn’t set in order to wake her up, but to let her know of an emergency. And it was going to keep going off until she stopped it. She sat straight up in bed, the last of her drowsiness fading fast. 

Iris swung her legs over the side of the bed, waiting a few seconds before she stood up and walked over to her desk. She picked up the tablet Cisco insisted she keep on her at all times (which she never did) and put in her passcode, opening up the compound’s security center. Two alerts popped up on the screen: the mainframe was breached and the motion detectors on the street around them had activated. People moving in on the compound was a more immediate problem, she figured, and touched the alert. The video cameras were showing a few squad cars stopped in front of the loading dock door. A handful of officers had exited their vehicles and were approaching the door, guns raised. 

She quickly tapped on the feeds for the other cameras. One or two officers were at every possible exit, their weapons drawn. She was screwed. She was so screwed. And she was also surprised that no one had bothered to wake her up when the alarms first went off. Knowing her friends, though, they probably figured they could take care of this themselves and didn’t want to wake her. She could hear Caitlin’s voice in the back of her head, chiding her for not ever getting enough sleep, and repeating that coffee wasn’t a substitute for the REM cycle (which, whatever; it worked). Not that Caitlin was one to talk, since she spent so many nights awake. 

Iris rushed from the room toward the Cortex; maybe, if they were all together, they could get out of here. Caitlin could, like, freeze someone’s shoes to the ground or maybe Cisco had some pepper spray, and she would ride on the back of one of their motorcycles as they escaped. 

Even in near darkness, the hallways illuminated only by the soft emergency lights at the edges where the ground met the floor, Iris knew her way around. She quickened her pace as the alarm kept blaring at her, warning her of the danger that was coming to all of them. But the Cortex was empty, and when she looked at the internal camera feed to the loading bay area, the bikes were gone. Those idiots, she thought; they must’ve gone out to try and distract the officers, and now she was stuck in the compound with no way to get out. She cycled through the various camera feeds and tried to spot them, coming up blank. 

“Hello?” she said into the mic. “Hey, guys, what the hell? Where are you?” She waited for an answer, turning the volume all the way up on the speakers, but she heard nothing. Not even the usual grunts from a fight or a quip from Cisco to reassure her that they were okay. “Hello? Are you there?”

 “They’re not going to answer,” Barry said, and Iris jumped. The tablet she was holding clattered onto the desk. She looked up at him, and he smiled wryly, the cowl pushed off of his head so she could see his face. “I’m pretty sure their comms were smashed. At least, I know Cisco’s was. I smashed it. Sorry.” 

She inhaled sharply. “Did you… did you do this to them? Did you tell someone where we were?” 

He shook his head, moving just too fast for it to be natural. She wondered if she would ever get used to that. “No, I swear. Iris, I wouldn’t betray you.” He searched her eyes, and she was relieved to see that he was telling her the truth. She had let him out; if she was the reason for her friends’ pain, Iris wouldn’t know what to do. “Not like this. I had no idea that the force even knew where this place was.”

 “Then why are you here?” she asked. “If you didn’t know that the police were going to come here?” 

“I was with them when our captain told them they were moving in on your compound.” 

“So you saw them? Are Cisco and Caitlin okay?”

Barry was quiet for a second, and he dropped his gaze to his boots. Iris pressed a hand to her mouth and stared at him, willing him to look her in the eye. Silently begging him to lie to her. “It wasn’t looking good when I left.” 

“What does that mean?” she asked, her voice higher than usual. 

“They were both injured,” he said. “Pretty badly. Vibe, or, uh, Cisco was shot in the shoulder, and Snow broke her arm. When I left them, they were surrounded. If they haven’t been arrested already, they will be soon. But Iris, that’s not what’s important right now. Right now, you and I need to get out of here.” 

Another alarm went off; the perimeter of the compound had been breached. They were inside the loading area now, fanning out into the space and making sure there weren’t any traps. It was only a matter of time, she realized, before they got in the Cortex. “Why are you here?” she asked him again. “If you were on duty, if you were fighting against my friends, why did you even bother coming here? I told you that we couldn’t see each other again while you worked for the CCPD, Barry. I meant it.” 

Barry frowned. “He asked me to help you. Cisco asked me to make sure you were safe. They don’t want you to get hurt, either. So, please, come with me and let me get us both out of here.” 

Of course Cisco and Caitlin put her safety above their own. They walked into danger night after night, but when it came to her, they asked someone they hated (and she knew they hated him, after only one interaction) to make sure she was taken care of. The next time she saw them, she was going to hug them and then chew them out for being so irresponsible and reckless. They should’ve just woken her up. But she wasn’t going to be stubborn about this, not with officers crawling through their home. “How did you get in here, anyway? The compound is on lockdown and there’s no way you could have gotten in without the right codes.” 

“I can run through walls,” he said simply. 

Iris froze. “You’re not planning to escape by running through a wall while holding me, are you? Because I can’t phase through solid objects.” 

Barry smiled weakly. “I was actually hoping you could just pop open a door somewhere, and I’d carry you out that way.” 

“Right. Duh.” She started hitting buttons on the computer screen. “Just give me a minute, okay? And then we are going to run out the front door to the middle building. It will be unlocked for thirty seconds, and then it’s going to lock back with no way to open it. Will that be enough time?” 

He snorted. “It will be more than enough,” he said. She tapped a few more things out on the screen. “What are you doing? Are you setting this place to blow up?” 

“What? God, no,” she said, glancing up at him. “There are people in here. No, I’m setting the security measures to extreme and wiping all of the information from our computers before I shut the power off. I think someone broke into the mainframe, and they will find a lot more illegal activity on the computers than they will in the compound itself. Everything that I can get will be passed along to my tablet, but once I do this, the majority of the Cortex will be gone for good.” 

He raised his eyebrows as she continued working. She shut off the power to their apartments, and then the loading dock, and then the holding cells, before she put in the code to cut off power to the computer. “Okay,” she said. “We have thirty seconds to get out as of…” Iris hit the last button, and the screen went dark. “Now.” 

She grabbed the tablet off the counter as Barry scooped her up in his arms and they sped out of the compound, shooting out of the door with seconds to spare, as he predicted. The one officer stationed outside of the door yelped when they sped past, and Iris hugged the tablet to her chest until Barry slowed down. They were about a mile from where they started. He set her gently down, making sure she was steady on her feet before backing away. 

Iris almost fell to the ground again when he left her side, but she stayed upright. “What are we going to do now?” he asked, his fingers drumming against his leg. She wondered if his nervous energy was even worse now that he had all of this speed, or if she just made him nervous. 

“What do you mean, what are _we_ going to do now?” Iris asked, waking her tablet again. 

Barry stared at her, his brow furrowed. “Well, I’m not going to leave you,” he said. “Not right now. Not again. I’m with you until all of this blows over.” 

“It’s not like the cops know to look for me,” Iris told him, not even looking up from her screen. “There’s nothing to worry about now that you saved me. Thank you for that, by the way. Honestly, thank you, Barry.” 

“I, uh, you’re welcome.” He didn’t move, though. She looked up at him finally, and smiled. “If there’s nothing to worry about, Iris, then let me take you back to your apartment.” 

She shook her head. “I’m not going back to my apartment,” she told him. 

“Then what are you…?” 

Iris smiled again, letting him take in the brilliance. He smiled a little back at her. “I’m going to save Caitlin and Cisco,” she said happily, and then looked back down at her tablet. It would take her at least an hour and a half to walk to their location, and probably even longer to search the building until she found them, but she was going to break them out of custody. No matter how long it took. 

Barry was next to her a second later, grabbing her shoulder and turning her face upward toward him. “What do you mean, you’re going to save them? Iris, you don’t even know where they are.” 

She held up the tablet to him, watching as he took in the map and the two pulsating dots. “I know exactly where they are,” she said. “Cisco and Caitlin have trackers in their arms. And before you ask, they put the trackers in themselves. It was, ostensibly, to help me direct them through the city during missions, but they also did it because they don’t trust themselves and wanted to make sure I knew where they were at all times in case something happened. Lucky for me, they did it, because now I know exactly where they are. And I’m going there to get them out.” 

He looked at her, and then stared down at the tablet, reading over it. “That’s the old CCPD headquarters,” he said slowly, looking up at her. 

“Yeah,” she said. “Also known as the current Advanced Taskforce headquarters.” It was the facility her dad worked at, even after he got transferred; the one with the gaudy mural on the wall proclaiming it a bastion of justice. Despite the fact that they illegally imprisoned people, experimented on them, and treated them like lab rats. Justice, her ass. That building was hell, filled with despicable people doing terrible things. 

“The Advanced Taskforce moved, Iris,” he told her. “After the containment breach, when two Advanced escaped. Or were broken out, I guess.” 

She shrugged, her eyes falling on one of the abandoned buildings that surrounded them. She remembered when this area thrived and people lived here, worked here. She remembered when all of the boarded up shops were busy and thriving. So much had changed in the past year. So many people had left. “If they moved, then why would Cisco and Caitlin be there? Does anyone work there?” 

“The only people who still work in the building are a few higher up detectives, the Advanced taskforce captain, and the director of the program,” he said. “I don’t understand why any of those people would be holding suspects there. They should have been taken to the new building and processed, just like all of the others.” 

Iris could think of a million reasons that someone would bring them to an old facility and hold them in captivity. Psychological torture for Caitlin. Or maybe they experiment on all of the Advanced there, just without the knowledge of the general force. “So the director works there, huh? The man that Caitlin said experimented on her? When are you going to believe that there is something terrible going on within your organization?” Iris asked. “What, do you need to see it?” 

“Iris, you know---” 

“Yeah, you’re a man a science,” she said. A man of science that could run faster than the speed of light, whose limbs twitched at inhuman speeds. But she was sure that he had already formed some sort of scientific explanation for the things he could do. “And you have to see things to believe them. I distinctly remember you telling me that quite often when we were growing up, and your mom would laugh. Look, Barry. Trust me, okay? Believe me. Whatever is happening to them, it’s not good. And I have to save them.” 

He sighed. She wondered what was going through his mind right now. “I believe _you_ ,” he said. “Of course I believe you.” She smiled at him again. “So, what are we going to do to get them out?” 

“What do you mean, _we_? There is no we. Unless you want to help me break into the CCPD headquarters and free two people that don’t like you and whom you don’t trust.” 

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” he said. “Look, you’re going to do this with or without my help, because you’re stubborn and protective. So I’m going to help you. I want to help _you_. Not for their sake, but for yours.” 

“Okay,” she said, and nodded. “Thank you, Barry.” She wasn’t quite sure how to express her gratitude or if just telling him thanks was enough to explain the magnitude of affection and appreciation she felt, but she was glad he was doing this. It reminded her why she cared about him and why she harbored a crush on him for all of those years. He was loyal, and a good person, and he was going to do what he thought was right. 

She returned to her tablet. With Barry’s speed and credentials, they would be able to get over to the headquarters in minutes. And then she would break Cisco and Caitlin out and they would make a run for it. Whoever was holding them wouldn’t be a match for all three of her friends, and definitely wouldn’t be a match for her. “So, uh,” Barry said, and she jerked her head up to look at him. “What’s the plan?” 

“We run over, run in, get them, and run out,” she said. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes with your speed.” 

He nodded, but she could tell he was skeptical. “And what will we do if there are armed guards? Or people specifically trained to take out Advanced?” 

“Luckily, you’re one of them,” Iris said. “They’ll just let you walk right past them. Look, we’ll figure it out as we go, okay? I don’t know what we’re up against. I can’t plan for a bunch of unknowns.” 

He sped over and gathered her into his arms again. “I’m pretty sure you just can’t plan in general,” he muttered, and she whacked him on the arm. Barry grinned, and they took off again. They were moving so fast that Iris couldn’t see the desolate streets of Central City, and Barry’s lightning was so bright that she could almost imagine that the streets were filled with life again. 

* * *

She wished she had passed out. After they shot her in the stomach and dosed her and Cisco with some kind of paralyzing agent, Caitlin wanted nothing more than to pass out and fade away into blissful darkness. But her eyes stayed open as the CCPD loaded her freezing cold body onto a stretcher and strapped her down. She understood exactly what was happening when they unloaded her and brought her into the station and up the elevator. And she could feel fear creep inside of her when the elevator stopped and the man who had previously operated on her stepped into her field of vision, his teeth exposed like a predator. She didn’t know his name, but she knew who he was. The director of the CCPD Advanced Taskforce. 

But she couldn’t move, and she couldn’t fall asleep or pass out or die, so she had to watch and listen. He made it impossible for her to do anything else with the way that he walked so close to her, always sure that he was in her sight. 

“Dr. Snow,” he said, once the elevator door closed and the officers were gone. “How I hoped we would meet again.” 

She never wanted to be here again. She hated sleeping and stayed up to the point of absolute exhaustion so she wouldn’t dream and would have nightmares where she was here again, with him, strapped to an operating table with a paralyzer turning her body into hard lead. If she only slept when she couldn’t stay awake any longer, then it was just darkness, and she could stay away from here for another hour, another day.

And in her waking hours, she fought her subconscious so as not to remind herself of this place. Caitlin focused on Iris, and on Cisco; her present, not her past. But there were times when her mind wandered back to the torture, when she remembered how he used to drive scalpels into her skin to see if her blood was frozen and how he used to sear her with white hot iron to see if it would burn. She remembered all of the experiments. Most of all, she remembered his laugh. There were times when the sound would resurface in her mind, and she swore that it echoed and surrounded her, choking her. 

Caitlin focused on her fingers, willing them to start moving, willing the paralytic to wear off. 

The man walked over to her and bent close to her body, examining her closely. His fingers probed her face, and then moved to her various wounds, touching each of them in turn. She always wondered if he was some sort of doctor that had gone too far in the pursuit of medicine, or if he was just a sick bastard who enjoyed slicing people open to see how they worked.

“This ice cast you made proved to be very effective,” he said. “It not only held the bone in place but it also reduced the swelling. Impressive.” He reached backward to grab something off the the table of instruments behind him. He came back with a small hammer and smashed it against her makeshift cast. 

Had Caitlin been able to scream, she would have. 

The ice fell away from her body and he gripped her arm, pulling it toward him to examine it even further, twisting it painfully to see the break from all sides. “Truly fascinating,” he muttered, and let her arm crash down onto the table. Her arm exploded with pain when the bone smacked against the hard surface. 

He backed away from her, out of her line of sight. “Sadly, though, I am not here to play with you, Dr. Snow. I have bigger things to work on, now that I finally have Mr. Ramon here. I cannot tell you how long I’ve waited for this day. And imagine my surprise when I followed the trail leading back from a missing CCPD agent and found a computer mainframe that he built. One that led to a camera with the two of you in the frame. You two have been together this whole time. I thought he broke you out to serve as bait as you both escaped, but it appears that you’re friends.” 

She could barely make him out from the corner of her left eye. He was bent over Cisco, studying him with the same intense, obsessed gaze he often turned on her in the past. She thought she saw the glint of a scalpel in his hand. “You see, Caitlin, he is important to me, much more so than you are. Cisco is the key to what I’ve been waiting fourteen years to achieve.” 

“Leave…” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. The muscles in her jaw ached with the extreme effort it took just to move. “Him… alone.” 

He laughed, and panic welled up in her; it was hard to breathe, she thought, too hard to breathe. Her lungs were constricting and her nose wasn’t processing air correctly. His laugh was suffocating her. Tears leaked from her eyes and froze before they hit the table, making a small sound against the metal as they dropped. “Even if I wanted to,” he said, his voice giddy, “I can’t! He can get me home, Caitlin. And everything I’ve done after accidentally falling into your universe, manipulating people and threatening city officials, and blowing up a particle accelerator, it was all in service of this moment. This glorious moment! And if all it takes is sacrificing a metahuman or two, what does it matter? No one will miss you.” 

“Is that a confession, Thawne, or were you just talking to yourself?” 

Caitlin cut her eyes toward the door. The Flash stood there, his arms crossed over his chest, and his cowl up over his face. And she could see Iris standing behind him, defiantly glaring in the direction of the Director. Caitlin wanted to ask why she was here. Why did Barry bring her along? Iris wasn’t made for this kind of confrontation. She would be destroyed by this man, knocked out and sliced open just for fun, just to see a human bleed. 

The man clapped his hands together in delight. “Barry Allen! I knew you would show up eventually. You always do.” 

* * *

Barry went flying at the man---Thawne, he called him, Director Thawne---seconds later. She hadn’t known what to expect when they waltzed into the CCPD headquarters together; she assumed that someone would try and detain them, or question why they were there, but no one even stopped them. They just let her and Barry pass without even so much as a glance. He ran her up the stairs and told the guards at the door to the stairwell that Thawne requested him specifically and to leave the floor, and they obeyed. Just like that. She guessed the CCPD emblem on his chest was good for one thing, at least. 

Her plan had worked. Well, the infiltration part had worked. Now all they needed was to grab Caitlin and Cisco and get them out of this building and far, far away from this man. And preferably leave with him in handcuffs, being taken off to Arkham or Iron Heights or something. It couldn’t be so difficult, could it? 

Thawne dodged. His body moved at a speed paralleled to Barry’s. He was a blur of bright red light and then he was standing five feet away, watching as Barry stumbled over himself and crashed into a standing desk. 

“Unlike you,” Thawne said, “I actually _am_ full of surprises.” 

“You’re one of us,” Barry said, bewildered. “An Advanced.” 

“I prefer the term metahuman. It reminds me of my own world. But yes, I am one of you. Better in every way than you are, but I am like you.” He disappeared, his body moving too fast for Iris to see. 

She focused instead on Caitlin and Cisco, strapped to two different tables with what looked like an IV drip inserted into their arms. Barry was right when he said it wasn’t looking good for them; she could see blood on Cisco’s hand and a few bruises on his jaw, not to mention what looked like a gunshot wound in his right shoulder. And Caitlin had a hole in her stomach and her arm looked a little swollen. They needed to get out of here and go to a clinic, or something. Iris knew of one run by an Advanced who would taken them; the woman knew Iris’s face and trusted her, and if she brought two people this injured, she wouldn’t be turned away. 

Iris started walking toward her friends, ignoring the brawl happening between the two men beside her. “Ah,” Thane said, and she felt him slam into her shoulder, “I don’t think so. I need them quite still.” Iris fell backward and tripped over a cart of surgical instruments, cutting her hand open with a scalpel. 

Barry came out of nowhere and clocked Thawne in the jaw, sending him reeling. Iris staggered to her feet and moved back toward Caitlin. She wasn’t going to let anything happen to them. They saved so many people in the last few months, people who were smuggled out through the fence or taken out of the custody of the CCPD and, most importantly, of this man. Caitlin and Cisco deserved to be saved, too. They deserved to be free. 

A hand circled her throat and in seconds, she was thrown against a wall, her feet dangling above the ground. “It’s not too late to do the right thing,” she wheezed. “Let me save Caitlin and Cisco, and let us all go. Please.” 

“I said no, Miss West. What, can you not hear properly? No matter what universe, you are always a thorn in my---” 

“Let her go,” Barry growled, grabbing Thawne by his shoulder and jerking him back. Iris fell to the floor, Thawne’s hands otherwise occupied. She gasped, inhaling deeply to fill her lungs with air. Barry and Thawne kept fighting around her. She closed her eyes, and tried to figure out the best way out of here. He wasn’t going to let them walk out alive, and especially not with Caitlin and Cisco in tow. And Barry, angry as he was, wasn’t really a match for him, either. She needed something powerful that she could use to take him out. 

Like one of Cisco’s weapons. The ones that he developed specifically for this purpose. She still had one of his grenades in her pocket, the extra one that she didn’t use when Barry ran into their compound the first time that night. Iris pulled it out and held it in her hand. It had to work. It had to be enough to stop this guy. Even if it only knocked him out for a few minutes, then she would take what she could get. 

She pulled the yellow trigger pin out of the grenade and tossed it. For a moment, nothing happened, and then Barry and Thawne dropped loudly to the floor. She staggered to her feet and dragged herself over to where Caitlin and Cisco were tied down. She slid the IV out of their arms and worked quickly to undo all of the straps and buckles that kept them tied down to the operating table. 

Time passed too quickly, and before she was able to get all of the ties off of one of her friends, Thawne and Barry started twitching. She worked faster, finally undoing all of Cisco’s bindings. “Come on,” she muttered, shaking the arm without a bullet wound. “Wake up, Cisco!” 

He moaned, and she dashed over to Caitlin. Barry opened his eyes and blinked a few times. He didn’t try to move, and she didn’t know if it was because he couldn’t or if he was waiting for Thawne to get up first. Thawne’s eyes opened, and he rolled his shoulders against the floor as Iris fumbled with Caitlin’s straps. He jumped to his feet and started to run at her, but Barry jumped up too, dashing in front of him before Thawne could reach Iris. 

Cisco slowly sat up behind her, groaning. She could see him out of the corner of her eye as she worked with Caitlin’s binds. Whatever fluid was in the IV must have been wearing off fairly quickly, because it only took a few more seconds before Cisco was able to sit up completely. For a second, he looked dazed, but then he winced and his hand flew to his injured shoulder. “Where am I?” he muttered. “Oh, my god, what happened to my head?” 

“CCPD headquarters,” Iris said, untying the last of Caitlin’s binds. She moved over and cupped Caitlin’s cold cheek in her hand, searching her eyes. “Are you okay?” Iris asked, her voice quiet. Caitlin nodded weakly and tried to smile, tentatively pressing her cheek even more into Iris’s palm. It was cold, and her fingers already felt numb, but Caitlin needed the comfort. She looked like she was about to shake apart. 

Something crashed behind them and Iris jumped as she spun around. Thawne knocked over a chair in his hurry to pin Barry against a wall. Barry tried to swing at him, but Thawne moved too quickly, like he expected Barry’s attacks. Like he had spent years fighting Barry, and knew every move by heart. 

Thawne cackled. “You’re so untrained in this universe,” he said. “I’ve come to expect so much from my rival, Barry, but I see my talents are wasted in this fight.” 

“What do you mean, in this universe?” Barry started vibrating, and then he slid out of Thawne’s grip, running to another side of the room. Iris helped Caitlin sit up. She tried to ignore the fight going on behind her, but it was so hard to block out the sounds of Barry being hit. 

“I mean, I’m not from your universe,” Thawne answered. “Do I need to spell it out for you? I am from another world.” 

Iris grabbed some gauze from a table beside Caitlin and ran it over to Cisco, pressing it onto his shoulder wound and wrapping it up. He grabbed one of Iris’s hands and gave it a squeeze. “I’m glad you came for us,” Cisco said, “even though it was completely stupid and you could have gotten yourself killed.” 

She smiled down at him. “I can still get myself killed, you know,” she whispered. 

“Too true, Miss West,” Thawne said, and suddenly Iris was on the other side of the room. Her head cracked against the cement wall. “You are all going to die here, tonight. I think I’ll start with you, and then move on to Mr. Allen, and then Dr. Snow, and finally, I’ll kill Cisco when I amplify his powers in order to create a window between worlds. How does that sound?” 

She pressed her palms against the wall and pushed herself up, ignoring the startling pain from the back of her head. Dots of bright light popped in her vision and she blinked them away, focusing on her enemy. “I think that sounds like a fucking terrible plan,” Iris snarled. 

Thawne grinned, and a chill ran down her spine. He started toward her, a blur of color and red lightning, and she ran. It wasn’t going to do her any good, but she had to do something. Her head throbbed with the effort of movement, and everything swam. Barry swept in and picked her up, moving her away from Thawne’s path. 

“You want something worthy of your talent, or whatever?” Barry asked, his arm held out in front of Iris protectively. “Then fight me.” 

Thawne ran at him and Barry disappeared; Iris followed the fight through the trail of lightning they both left behind. Cisco and Caitlin moved off of their tables and hobbled toward her. This whole room, large as it was, had become an arena, and it wasn’t big enough for all five of them. Thawne must have hit Barry, because he was suddenly visible again, slamming against the floor a few feet away from them. She started to move toward him, her panic for him outweighing her pain, but a hand pulled her back. 

“Stay here, with Caitlin,” Cisco said. “She still isn’t at a hundred percent.” Caitlin was slumped against the wall next to Iris, her eyes glued to Thawne as he and Barry fought.

“Neither are you,” Iris argued. “Both of you need to get out of here---” 

He laughed a little, a grin lighting up his face. “Coming from you? That’s rich.” 

His wound was still going to be a problem; the gauze may have helped with the bleeding, but it was probably also infected. The wound needed to be closed. “Cisco, you can’t fight. You’re injured.” 

“I am, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything, Iris,” he said. Cisco moved forward and clapped his hands together, the room shaking slightly. Thawne dropped to the floor. “If you want to fight, you’re going to have to fight both of us. And you can’t win against both of us.” 

“Cisco Ramon,” Thawne said, pushing himself off of the ground. “Always a hero, no matter the universe. It’s refreshing how predictable you all are. It means I don’t need to come up with any new strategies to beat you.” 

Barry stood up again and ran at Thawne as Cisco produced another sonic wave; but while it kept Eobard from running, it also stopped Barry in his tracks. “Dude!” Barry said, gesturing at himself. “Don’t disrupt my speed, too.” 

“Sorry. I’ll, uh, try to keep my hits more localized.”

 Caitlin moaned and Iris slid down next to her, her eyes torn away from the fight again. “Caitlin?” she asked, setting her hand against her friend’s thigh. It looked like her wounds weren’t getting worse, and from the way that her fingers moved and the tips of her boots bounched up and down, the paralytic had worn off. But Caitlin wasn’t moving. All she was doing was watching Thawne. 

“He was the one who experimented on me,” Caitlin muttered. “And I could see dried blood on the table I was strapped to as well as some of his instruments. There were others. He’s done this to other people. He is going to do it to Cisco.” 

Iris frowned. “He’s sick, Cait,” she said. She had tried to give him an out, tried to give him a chance to redeem himself. And he’d just tightened his hand around her neck. “He deserves ten times worse than all of the pain he inflicted on his victims.” 

Caitlin nodded numbly, and Iris shivered. She wondered if Caitlin was even trying to modulate the temperature around her, or if she was so focused on the man who had tortured her to realize what she was doing. 

The back of Iris’s head still pulsated with pain, and she gently touched the wound, wincing at the sticky wetness of what turned out to be blood. The bright dots of color had long since disappeared, but her vision tunnelled, darkness clouding out her peripheral vision. 

“Are you okay?” Caitlin asked, finally looking away from Thawne. 

Iris nodded. “I’m fine,” she lied. “I’ll be fine.” 

Caitlin chewed her lip, her eyebrow quirked slightly. It was fine if Caitlin didn’t believe her, because it wasn’t true. Her head hurt, she was pretty sure she had a concussion, and there was a fight going on around them, one that threatened the lives of nearly every person she cared about. She wasn’t okay. But she had to believe that they all would be, in time. 

Iris turned back to the fight, and watched as Thawne wrenched Cisco’s injured shoulder backward. He aimed a punch at Cisco face, not even bothering to move in superspeed just so Cisco would see it coming. 

Barry grabbed Thawne’s fist and twisted his arm around to his back, slamming him against a wall. “Why are you doing this?” Barry asked. “You called me your rival. Did you set off the explosion and create the Advanced because of me? To screw with me?” 

“For once, I didn’t do this all because of you,” Thawne said. “It was liberating, actually. I didn't spend my time in this universe fucking over this world’s Barry Allen. Instead, I broadened my scope. Instead of destroying you, I decided to destroy Central City and all the people living in it. I gained the trust of important people, orchestrated a catastrophe, and sowed fear in the hearts of the human beings. I wanted to ruin _all of you_.” 

He cackled, and shoved Barry away from him, slamming a fist into Barry’s gut. He doubled over and Thawne zipped away from him, heading toward her and Caitlin. 

Cisco hit Thawne with a sonic wave, knocking him to his knees. Caitlin stood up from the wall and walked over. Iris tried to grab her and pull her back to safety but Caitlin eluded her grasp, silently padding over to where the others were standing. Thawne’s attention was on Cisco, and he and Barry were so focused on Thawne that Iris was convinced she was the only one who noticed Caitlin moved. 

Thawne’s hand started to vibrate, and Cisco’s face went still, all of the color draining fast. “I could kill you right now, Cisco,” he said. “I can use Barry to get home. You are simply the easiest path to my destination.”

Caitlin walked up behind him. “You said we were predictable, Thawne,” Caitlin said, grabbing his neck with her hands. “Did you predict this?” 

He screamed and tried to push his way out of her grip, but Caitlin held steadfast. She shuddered, and Iris ran over just in time to see Thawne’s lips turn blue. Both Iris and Cisco shouted, but Caitlin ignored them, her eyes fluttering close as she drained the heat from Thawne’s body, freezing him from the inside out. He lurched forward and Caitlin bent slightly to keep her grip on his neck firm. 

Finally, she released him, his ice-crusted body dropping to the floor. Caitlin stood up straight, and looked at her hands; they were pale, but no more so than any other white girl in the area. The body heat she drained from Thawne was already helping her. 

“What did you do?” Barry asked, looking from her to the unmoving body on the floor. The sun broke over the horizon, shedding the first light of a new day onto the dead body of Director Thawne. 

Caitlin took a deep breath and looked up at him. “I killed him,” she said. “To save all of us.” 

Barry pushed his cowl back. Cisco walked over to where she and Caitlin stood, taking care to step over Thawne’s body. Caitlin hugged him and Cisco hugged her back, wrapping his arms around her, holding her close to him. “Thank you,” he whispered. She nodded against his face, and Iris watched the two of them. They were okay. They were alive. 

Cisco reached out with one hand and pulled Iris toward them, too, adding her to their hug. It was warm nestled between the two of them, a foreign sensation for their group. 

“What are we supposed to do now?” Barry asked, looking at each of them in turn. “With Thawne dead, no one will believe that he orchestrated all of this. No one will believe that the Advanced are safe, or that this police state is exactly what an evil man wanted. They won’t even believe that he performed experiments on people in police custody. We should have arrested him, taken him in the right way.” 

“Even if we had,” Cisco said, his face muffled by Caitlin’s hair, “Thawne never would have cooperated. No one would believe us over the director of the Advanced Taskforce. Caitlin did what she had to do, Barry. She saved us from a madman.” 

Barry curled his hands into fists and released them again, whatever anger he tried to project fading into confusion and worry. Iris watched him over Cisco’s shoulder. “What are we supposed to do?” he repeated.

“We change their opinion,” Iris said, reached her hand out to Barry. He took it, and she pulled him over to her, to their group. All of her friends, together in one place. Injured, but safe. She would have to get them to that clinic soon, and she hoped that it wasn’t too late. “We work on saving Central City, and fixing the problems that this man created. Together.”


End file.
